Air quality in Bulgaria continues to be a problem for a number of cities, mainly due to excessive levels of particulate matter, and in some places also due to high concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide or ozone, as the authors of the platform point out.  "The growing need for information prompted us to create such a website, which visualises forecasts of particulate matter of different sizes, including desert dust," says Assistant Professor Dr. Anastasia Stoycheva of NIMH. The site also provides information on the presence of different types of pollen. For the time being, airquality.meteo.bg is only available in Bulgarian. 

Air pollution forecasts are an essential part of the atmospheric monitoring services provided by the European Union's Copernicus Earth Observation Programme. State-of-the-art methods are used to forecast pollutant concentrations up to 4 days ahead, including observations from satellites and ground-based instruments.