The island's only government air quality station in Denpasar has been dark since August 2025. Seven other monitors — all we can find — tell a consistent story: the particulate matter load across populated Bali routinely exceeds every international guideline.
In April 2026, Bali's regulations on organic waste disposal were tightened. The Suwung landfill, long the island's primary waste endpoint, stopped accepting organic material. In the weeks that followed, residents across Ubud, Kerobokan, Canggu and Jimbaran reported a marked increase in the smell and visible presence of burning waste — particularly in the early morning and after dark.
This document sets out what the available air quality monitoring records can and cannot tell us about that change. It is written for journalists, researchers, and residents who want to verify the numbers themselves.
Public historical data exists for only a handful of Bali air quality monitors. The AQICN network preserves records for the Kerobokan community sensor (469 days, now offline) and the Denpasar government KLHK station (548 days, offline since August 2025). OpenAQ preserves CSVs for three additional private AirGradient sensors in Ubud, Balangan and Kopernik — all now offline as well.
Two PurpleAir units in Klungkung and Jimbaran are still reporting. Between them, they cover roughly two years of continuous data.
Bali has no distributed public air quality monitoring network. There is no multi-year record for Sanur, North Bali, or East Bali. There is no open data feed from the provincial government. There is no requirement for industrial, hospitality, or municipal operators to publish ambient readings.
What exists is a patchwork of privately-owned devices, voluntarily shared through platforms that happen to have open APIs. This document's purpose is to make that patchwork legible.
"Without distributed monitoring, it is impossible to determine whether the patterns seen in Kerobokan and Denpasar are representative of the island as a whole."— Section 09 · Historical Data
| Sensor | Network | Area | Days of record | Mean PM2.5 | % > WHO 24h | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kerobokan / Umalas | AQICN · GAIA | Canggu corridor | 469 | 21.9 | 68% | Offline Mar 2026 |
| Denpasar / KLHK | AQICN · Govt. | Central Denpasar | 548 | 15.1 | ~40% | Offline Aug 2025 |
| Kopernik / Ubud | OpenAQ · AirGradient | Ubud | 36 | 31.2 | 92% | Offline Mar 2026 |
| Ubud / Rozendal | OpenAQ · AirGradient | Ubud | 167 | 17.8 | 57% | Offline Dec 2025 |
| Balangan | OpenAQ · AirGradient | Bukit peninsula | 26 | 15.4 | 46% | Offline Aug 2025 |
| Klungkung | PurpleAir | East Bali | 687 | — | — | Active |
| Jimbaran | PurpleAir | South coast | 728 | — | — | Active |
One government station now covers an island of 4.4 million people. Its only peer in Denpasar went dark in August 2025. The community sensor that filled the gap across the Canggu corridor stopped transmitting two weeks before Bali's organic-waste ban took effect.
The government station at Graha Sewaka Dharma, Lumintang, recorded continuously for 548 days from September 2023 to August 2025. Its final two readings rose sharply — daily medians of 45.7 and 75.0 µg/m³ on August 8th and 9th, placed firmly in the US EPA "Unhealthy" band — before the feed stopped.
On the public KLHK portal (ispu.menlhk.go.id), the station's listing reads "Sedang dalam perawatan" — under maintenance. A search of the portal for "Denpasar," "Bali," or "Gianyar" returns no results. Only Kabupaten Badung appears publicly.
The Kerobokan community sensor, part of the AQICN / GAIA network, recorded 469 days from November 2024 to March 2026 and went offline on the 15th of March, two weeks before organic waste was banned from the Suwung landfill.
The sensor was privately owned. As a volunteer device, it may have simply failed, been moved, or been taken offline by its operator. The record it left behind — daily medians averaging 21.9 µg/m³, with 68% of days exceeding the WHO 24-hour guideline — is the longest continuous, openly downloadable window we have into the air above south Bali.
The regulation's intent is sound. Its execution has widened the very gap that monitoring was meant to measure.
On the first of April, Denpasar banned organic waste from the Suwung landfill — Bali's largest waste endpoint — as part of a plan to close the site by August 2026. The stated aim is a legitimate environmental objective: push households toward source-separation and reduce landfill dependency.
Implementation has outpaced infrastructure. Without adequate composting or collection alternatives in place, residents have turned in some cases to burning waste in backyards, roadsides, and ravines, and in others to dumping it in the rivers that feed the west-coast catchments.
Denpasar cleanup crews have reportedly removed approximately seven tons of waste from rivers daily, according to local reporting citing the city's Public Works office (PUPR). What burns at roadside does not appear in any such tally. It appears only in the air.
Mixed-waste burning releases fine particulate matter, dioxins, furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and heavy metals. PM2.5 — particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers — penetrates deep into the lungs and crosses into the bloodstream. Long-term exposure is associated with respiratory and cardiovascular disease and with measurable reductions in life expectancy.
The concern addressed here is not the regulation itself. It is this: Bali currently has no instrumentation adequate to measure the air-quality consequences of a major waste-management transition as it unfolds.
Cited reporting
Hey Bali News · Bali's Organic Waste Ban Backfires · April 2026
Bali.live · No Sorting, No Collection · April 2026
What can be shown, with a downloadable receipt attached to every number.
548 days of daily medians, Sep 2023 — Aug 2025. Government-operated, central Denpasar.
Mean daily PM2.5 15.1 µg/m³ · 3.0× WHO annual guideline · roughly 40% of days exceeded the 24-hour guideline.
469 days of daily medians, Nov 2024 — Mar 2026. Community-operated, Canggu corridor.
Mean daily PM2.5 21.9 µg/m³ · 4.4× WHO annual · 68% of days exceeded the 24-hour guideline.
36 days merged from two co-located AirGradient units, Oct 2025 — Mar 2026. Surfaced via OpenAQ.
Mean daily PM2.5 31.2 µg/m³ · 6.2× WHO annual · 92% of days exceeded the 24-hour guideline.
167 days, Jun — Dec 2025. AirGradient unit near central Ubud; OpenAQ.
Mean daily PM2.5 17.8 µg/m³ · 3.6× WHO annual · 57% of days exceeded the 24-hour guideline.
26 days, Jul — Aug 2025. Bukit peninsula. Sensor went offline after three weeks.
Mean daily PM2.5 15.4 µg/m³ · 46% of days exceeded the 24-hour guideline.
687 / 728 days and counting. Two PurpleAir community units on the southern coast and in East Bali respectively.
Klungkung shows a pattern similar to Kerobokan — moderate baseline with daily peaks reaching "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups." Jimbaran's coastal readings stay close to background.
Even taken together, these five historical records and two active sensors amount to a single thin slice of Bali's air. There is no multi-year public record for Sanur, Amed, North Bali, or the eastern regencies. There is no open-data feed from the provincial government. The longest dataset, Kerobokan, covers only fifteen months. Under this instrumentation, no one — resident, researcher, or regulator — can say with confidence what the island's air quality is actually doing.
Bali's public air-quality infrastructure, measured against the places it is most frequently compared to.
| Jurisdiction | Government AQ stations | Population | Stations per million |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bali (today) | 1 | 4.4 million | 0.2 |
| Hong Kong | 18 | 7.5 million | 2.4 |
| Bangkok, Thailand | ~70 | 10.7 million | 6.5 |
| London, UK | 100+ | 9.0 million | 11+ |
The gap in coverage is not marginal. To reach even Hong Kong's density, Bali would need approximately eleven additional public government-class stations. To reach Bangkok's, roughly twenty-eight. At London's ratio, fifty.
Four practical, low-cost steps that any actor — government, foundation, business, or individual — could take or fund now.
The Lumintang KLHK station produced almost two years of valuable data before going offline. Repairing or replacing a single monitor is not a major infrastructure investment. Publish an expected return date.
Low-cost open-hardware monitors such as AirGradient (US$195) and PurpleAir (US$229) can fill the gaps immediately. A network of five to ten units across populated Bali would transform visibility at a total cost well under US$3,000.
Any operational sensor — government, hospitality, industrial, community — should feed an open platform such as OpenAQ, AQICN, or PurpleAir. Private data helps private decisions; public data makes public ones possible.
As Bali moves away from the Suwung landfill, live air-quality data is the only feedback loop that can catch burning hotspots early and that can distinguish regulatory success from regulatory blowback.
This page exists because the infrastructure that should provide those records has been allowed to fall away. The data we do have is damning enough to warrant action. The data we do not have is itself the argument.