About Air Quality Watch – HKH
Air Quality Watch – HKH is developed and maintained by ICIMOD to track and forecast air pollution across the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, with a particular focus on the Indo-Gangetic Plain and Himalayan foothills, one of the world's most severe air pollution hotspots.
About ICIMOD
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is a regional intergovernmental knowledge and learning centre serving the eight countries of the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Kathmandu, Nepal, ICIMOD's mission is to build and share knowledge that drives regional policy and action, enabling the region's diverse countries and communities to move toward greener, more inclusive, and climate-resilient development.
Air quality is one of ICIMOD's core areas of work, carried out through its Regional Programme on Atmosphere and its Atmospheric Watch Initiative. This work focuses on generating scientific evidence on pollution sources, improving access to air quality data, and strengthening the science-policy linkages that regional member countries need to act on transboundary pollution.
About This Portal
Millions of people across the Indo-Gangetic Plain and Himalayan foothills are exposed to hazardous levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) for much of the year, with concentrations during peak smog episodes reaching many times the WHO's recommended limits. Because this pollution crosses borders, moving with weather systems between countries and sub-regions, no single country can address it alone. Air Quality Watch – HKH was built to give the region a shared, public picture of this problem.
The portal brings together ground-based monitoring data with satellite observations and atmospheric modelling to show current conditions and short-term forecasts across local, sub-regional, and regional scales. Its forecasting tool is powered by the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), which simulates how emissions and weather interact to produce a rolling forecast of PM2.5 and other pollutants; including a visual timelapse of pollution plumes moving across the region, through hotspots such as Lahore, New Delhi, and Kolkata.
The dashboard was developed under ICIMOD's Atmospheric Watch Initiative, with technical collaboration from NASA SERVIR, the joint NASA–USAID programme ICIMOD has implemented in the region as SERVIR-HKH, alongside regional member country government agencies who contribute ground monitoring data and domain expertise.
Who It's For
The portal is designed for use by the public, researchers, public health officials, and policymakers across the HKH region; anyone who needs a clear, evidence-based view of current and forecast air quality to make informed decisions, from an individual planning outdoor activity to a government agency coordinating a cross-border pollution response.