# Arkansas air quality today — live AQI by metro > Source: https://breathecheck.com/air-quality/us/arkansas/ > Live AQI for 2 Arkansas metros, updated hourly from EPA AirNow. Where the state's air is worst right now, and how far apart its cities are. # Arkansas air quality today Updated 14 Sep 2026, 22:12 UTC · LIVE 2 metros tracked Across the 2 Arkansas metros BreatheCheck measures, air is worst right now in Little Rock at AQI 63 (Moderate) and cleanest in Fayetteville at AQI 48 . ## Which Arkansas city has the worst air quality right now? | # | Metro | AQI | UV now | Dominant | | 1 | Little Rock no page yet | 63 Moderate | 1.2 | PM2.5 | | 2 | Fayetteville no page yet | 48 Good | 1.7 | PM2.5 | ## What is the UV index in Arkansas today? The strongest UV in Arkansas today is 8.1 (Very High) in Fayetteville, arriving around 1pm local time. The mildest of the 2 metros we model here peaks at 7.8 in Little Rock. UV is modelled, not measured — unlike the AQI above it, which comes off an instrument. How we handle UV → ## Fall field burning across the Delta counties Arkansas has no nonattainment area for particulate matter, and its most visible air event of the year is not a regulatory one. Each fall, growers across the northeast Delta burn crop residue after harvest — rice above all — to clear straw and the weeds and disease it shelters before the next season. In EPA’s 2008 National Emissions Inventory, Arkansas ranked highest of all states for particulate emissions from agricultural burning. What the state does about that is encourage. The Smoke Management Guidelines growers work under are voluntary, developed in partnership among the Ag Council of Arkansas, the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, the State Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy and Environment; a burn is reported to the Department of Agriculture’s dispatch center, not licensed by it. The Division of Environmental Quality’s Office of Air Quality permits, inspects and enforces through four branches, and issues Ozone Action Days from May through September for Pulaski, Faulkner, Lonoke and Saline counties. Field burning is not where that authority reaches. Terrain decides where the smoke ends up, and Arkansas is really two terrains. The eastern third is Mississippi alluvial plain, flat enough that nothing steers a plume except whatever the wind is doing that afternoon. The Ozark and Ouachita highlands hold the north and west, with Little Rock on the Arkansas River between them. The Delta towns closest to the burning are where a fall reading would say the most, and they are also where this site has the fewest pages — a gap in what we have built, not evidence about what they breathe. ## Where do these Arkansas readings come from? 2 of the 2 metros here report from a named regulatory monitor — Little Rock-North Little Rock, Springdale (Springdale-Fayetteville-Bentonville). The dominant pollutant across Arkansas today is PM2.5 . We track 2 metropolitan areas in Arkansas, not the whole state, and none of them has its own page yet — we publish a metro page where searches for it clear a floor, and none here does, though every one is measured hourly. There is no state-wide average here on purpose: averaging 2 metros into one figure would invent a value for all the ground between them. How we measure, and what we refuse to estimate → ## Neighbouring states Smoke and inversions do not stop at a state line, so when Arkansas looks wrong the answer is often next door. ## Related Updated 14 Sep 2026, 22:12 UTC