license: cc-by-4.0
language:
- en
- he
pretty_name: Jerusalem Air Quality — Weekday vs Shabbat
size_categories:
- 1M<n<10M
tags:
- air-quality
- environmental
- jerusalem
- israel
- time-series
- shabbat
- sabbath
- pm25
- no2
- environmental-monitoring
configs:
- config_name: default
data_files:
- split: train
path: data/readings.parquet
Jerusalem Air Quality — Weekday vs Shabbat
Twelve months of 5-minute-resolution air-quality readings from 12 monitoring stations across Jerusalem, formatted for analysing the weekday vs Friday vs Shabbat (Saturday) pattern in urban pollution.
The motivation: Jerusalem has a uniquely strong weekly traffic cycle — many streets in observant neighbourhoods empty out from Friday afternoon to Saturday night. This dataset is intended to support quantitative work on the resulting air-quality signal.
Source and attribution
All readings come from the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection (המשרד להגנת הסביבה) national air-quality monitoring network, accessed through the public portal at https://air.sviva.gov.il/.
The MoEP / sviva.gov.il site is the canonical source. This dataset is a convenience repackaging of that public data into a tidy parquet file with some derived columns (local time, day-of-week, Shabbat/Friday flags) and 12 months of history pre-aggregated for the Jerusalem stations.
If you use this data in research or downstream work, please cite the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection as the original source.
Coverage
- Window: 2025-04-28 → 2026-04-28 (12 months, full year)
- Resolution: 5 minutes (native sensor cadence)
- Stations: 12 active continuous monitoring stations within the
Jerusalem region (
regionId == 8in the source system). - Total valid readings: ~7.1 million (only readings flagged
validby the source system are included; sensor-error / calibration rows are dropped).
Stations
| station_id | Name (English) | Name (Hebrew) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Bar Ilan St | רחוב בר אילן | Major arterial through ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood |
| 13 | Baka | בקעה | Residential mixed |
| 36 | Safra Square | כיכר ספרא | City centre / municipal complex |
| 193 | Romema | רוממה | Ultra-Orthodox |
| 310 | Central Bus Station Platform 10 | רציף 10 תחנה מרכזית | Heavy bus traffic |
| 328 | Atarot industrial zone | אזור תעשייה עטרות | Industrial / north |
| 458 | Devorah HaNevia St | רחוב דבורה הנביאה | Residential |
| 547 | Highway 16 / Beit interchange | כביש 16-מחלף בייט | Highway interchange |
| 568 | Rockefeller Museum | מוזיאון רוקפלר | East Jerusalem corridor |
| 607 | Beit Safafa | בית צפאפא | South-east neighbourhood |
| 623 | Atarot Eden | עטרות עדן | North; partial coverage from 2025-08 |
| 635 | Bezalel St | ירושלים, רחוב בצלאל בזק | City centre; partial coverage from 2026-02 |
Full station metadata is in stations.csv.
Pollutants and parameters
Per-station coverage varies — not every station measures every parameter. The full set present in the dataset:
| code | pollutant_en | typical units |
|---|---|---|
NO |
Nitric oxide | ppb |
NOX |
Nitrogen oxides | ppb |
NO2 |
Nitrogen dioxide | ppb |
CO |
Carbon monoxide | ppm |
O3 |
Ozone | ppb |
SO2 |
Sulphur dioxide | ppb |
PM2.5 |
Fine particulates | µg/m³ |
PM10 |
Coarse particulates | µg/m³ |
TSP |
Total suspended particulates | µg/m³ |
Benzene |
Benzene | ppb |
Toluene |
Toluene | ppb |
Temp, ITemp, RH, WS, WD |
Meteorological co-variates | — |
Schema
data/readings.parquet (long form, one row per (station, timestamp, pollutant)):
| column | type | description |
|---|---|---|
station_id |
int | MoEP station identifier |
station_name_he |
string | Station name in Hebrew |
station_name_en |
string | Station name in English |
station_lat, station_lon |
float | Station coordinates (WGS-84) |
timestamp |
timestamp[UTC] | Reading timestamp in UTC |
timestamp_local |
timestamp[Asia/Jerusalem] | Same instant in local time (handles DST) |
dow |
int8 | Day of week, Mon=0 … Sun=6 |
hour |
int8 | Local hour 0–23 |
is_friday |
bool | dow == 4 |
is_shabbat |
bool | dow == 5 (Saturday all-day — naive proxy) |
shabbat_or_chag_exact |
bool | True between Hebcal-published candle-lighting (Friday or chag eve) and havdalah (Saturday or chag conclusion), Jerusalem times. The recommended Shabbat flag. |
is_yom_tov |
bool | True on local dates that fall on a major Jewish holiday (Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, etc.). |
holiday |
string | null | Name of any Jewish holiday or observance for that local date (e.g. "Yom HaAtzma'ut", "Erev Shavuot"). Joined with ; if multiple. |
pollutant |
string | Source code (e.g. NO2, PM2.5) |
pollutant_en |
string | English long name |
pollutant_he |
string | Hebrew long name (as published by the source) |
pollutant_id |
int | MoEP pollutant identifier |
value |
float64 | Reading value |
units |
string | Reading units (per the source) |
Quick start
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("danielrosehill/Jerusalem-Air-Quality-Shabbat", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()
# Mean NO2 by day of week, for Bar Ilan St
import pandas as pd
no2 = df[(df.station_id == 5) & (df.pollutant == "NO2")]
print(no2.groupby("dow")["value"].mean())
Or directly with pandas / pyarrow:
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_parquet("hf://datasets/danielrosehill/Jerusalem-Air-Quality-Shabbat/data/readings.parquet")
Headline finding (preliminary)
Using the daytime window 07:00–22:00 local time, gaseous traffic pollutants drop sharply on Shabbat across all 12 stations, with Friday sitting roughly half-way:
| Pollutant | Friday % drop vs Sun-Thu | Shabbat % drop vs Sun-Thu |
|---|---|---|
| NO | ~40 % | ~55 % (range 19–76 %) |
| NOx | ~34 % | ~52 % |
| NO₂ | ~30 % | ~47 % |
| Toluene | ~44 % | ~38 % |
| Benzene | ~25 % | ~21 % |
| CO | ~7 % | ~8 % |
The biggest Shabbat drops are in observant West-Jerusalem neighbourhoods (Bezalel ~73 %, Bar Ilan ~55 %, Romema ~52 %) and the smallest along corridors that carry significant non-observant traffic (Rockefeller Museum ~13 %, Safra Square ~33 %).
Particulates (PM2.5, PM10) do not drop on Shabbat — they often rise. This is a real signal in the data but is confounded by Saharan dust intrusions and weekend grilling, and needs its own controlled analysis.
Per-station summary tables are in analysis/. Full write-up of the
methodology, caveats, and limitations is in analysis/FINDINGS.md.
Caveats and known limitations
- Two Shabbat flags are provided.
is_shabbatis the naïve calendar Saturday (Sun=6, Sat=5) and is included for backwards compatibility.shabbat_or_chag_exactis the recommended flag — it uses Hebcal's Jerusalem-specific candle-lighting (Friday eve, 40 minutes before sunset) and havdalah (≈42 minutes after sunset, three medium stars) times, and also covers Yom Tov days. There is a single set of Hebcal times applied to all stations; intra-Jerusalem variation is under one minute and not material for hourly analysis. - Jewish holidays are flagged but not removed. Use
is_yom_tovto exclude the seven major Israeli yamim tovim from your weekday baseline; useholidayto filter by name. Yom Kippur in particular is the cleanest air day of the year (Wed 2025-10-01 was YK 2025); leaving it in inflates the apparent cleanness of the weekday baseline. - Sensor validity flag is trusted as-is. Only
valid: truereadings are included; the source system's QC decisions have not been re-verified. - Two stations have partial coverage: 623 (Atarot Eden) starts 2025-08-06; 635 (Bezalel St) starts 2026-02-05. Their statistics use fewer Saturdays.
- Station 509 (Malchei Israel) is listed as active in the source
metadata but returned no historical data over this window and is
omitted from
data/readings.parquet. - Region filter: stations were selected by
regionId == 8in the source system. Two stations on the periphery of the region (Highway 16 and Atarot) sit outside the historical city core but are functionally part of the Jerusalem network.
License
The underlying data is published by the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection as a public-information service. This dataset is shared under CC-BY-4.0 with attribution to the Ministry as the original data source.
Versioning
- v1 (2026-04-28): initial release. 12 months × 5-min × 12 stations, long-form parquet.
- v1.1 (2026-04-28): adds Hebcal-derived columns
shabbat_or_chag_exact,is_yom_tov, andholidayfor Jerusalem-precise temporal filtering. Underlying readings unchanged.
External data sources
- Air-quality readings: Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection (https://air.sviva.gov.il/).
- Shabbat candle / havdalah times and Jewish-calendar metadata: Hebcal, public REST API, Jerusalem (geonameid 281184).