Tools

10 tools — 8 over the NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO) API v2, plus two over separate NCEI bulk-CSV corpora: severe-weather event search over the Storm Events Database, and disaster costs over Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters:

noaa_climate_list_datasets

List all available NOAA CDO datasets — approximately 11 in total.

• Returns dataset IDs, names, data coverage fraction, and temporal range
• No required parameters — returns everything by default
• Optionally filter by data type, location, station, or date range
• Common datasets: GHCND (daily, 1763–present), GSOM (monthly), GSOY (annual), NORMAL_DLY/MLY/ANN/HLY (1981–2010 climate normals)
• Start here to orient before calling noaa_climate_fetch_data

noaa_climate_list_data_categories

List data category groups that organize related measurement types.

• ~41 categories including Temperature, Precipitation, Wind, Pressure, Sunshine, Sky cover, Weather Type
• Optionally filter by dataset, location, station, or date range
• Use before noaa_climate_list_data_types to narrow by measurement domain

noaa_climate_list_data_types

List specific measurement labels for a dataset or category.

• Hundreds of data types across all datasets
• Filter by dataset (e.g., GHCND) or category (e.g., TEMP) to narrow results
• Common GHCND types: TMAX (max temperature), TMIN (min temperature), PRCP (precipitation), SNOW (snowfall), SNWD (snow depth), AWND (average wind speed)
• Returns ID, name, coverage fraction, and date range per type

noaa_climate_list_location_categories

List the location categories that scope noaa_climate_find_locations — 12 in total.

• Returns category IDs (CITY, ST, CNTY, CNTRY, ZIP, US_TERR, CLIM_REG, CLIM_DIV, HYD_ACC, HYD_CAT, HYD_REG, HYD_SUB) and their names
• Call it when you do not know which locationCategoryId to pass
• Pagination and sort only — the CDO endpoint ignores dataset, location, station, and date filters, so none are offered

noaa_climate_find_locations

Search geographic locations by category.

• Category types: ST (US states, 51), CNTY (counties), CITY (cities), CNTRY (countries), ZIP (zip codes), US_TERR (US territories), CLIM_REG (NOAA climate regions), CLIM_DIV (climate divisions), hydrological categories — noaa_climate_list_location_categories returns the authoritative set
• Use locationCategoryId=ST to list all states in one call
• nameContains gives the name search the CDO API lacks: the server enumerates the requested category and matches the substring case-insensitively, so locationCategoryId=CITY with nameContains=seattle resolves a city in one call. It is a size rule, not a category list — the category must hold at most 4,000 locations, which is every category but ZIP (30,415), and a datasetId or datacategoryId filter can bring a larger one back under the limit. Past it, page alphabetically with sortField=name
• Returns location IDs (FIPS:37, CITY:US530018, ZIP:98101) used in station search and data queries

noaa_climate_find_stations

Search weather observation stations.

• Filter by location ID, bounding box (lat/lon), dataset, data type, and date range
• Returns station IDs, names, coordinates, elevation, and data coverage dates
• A station must have data for the dataset and date range you want — pass datasetId and date range to ensure compatibility
• Common station ID formats: GHCND:USW00024233, COOP:010008
• Station IDs returned here feed directly into noaa_climate_fetch_data

noaa_climate_get_station

Fetch full metadata for a single weather station by ID.

• Returns name, coordinates (decimal degrees), elevation, and full data coverage date range
• Use to verify a station before querying data, or to check its temporal coverage
• Mirrors the noaa://stations/{stationId} resource as a direct lookup

noaa_climate_fetch_data

Fetch historical observation records from a NOAA CDO dataset.

• Requires datasetId, startDate, and endDate; optionally scoped by station, location, and data type
• Date range limits: sub-daily, daily, and radar datasets (GHCND, PRECIP_15, PRECIP_HLY, NORMAL_DLY, NORMAL_HLY, NEXRAD2, NEXRAD3) — 1 year max per request; monthly and annual datasets (GSOM, GSOY, NORMAL_MLY, NORMAL_ANN) — 10 years max
• Unit selection: strongly recommended — pass units=metric (SI) or units=standard (Fahrenheit/inches). Without it, GHCND values are raw tenths-of-unit integers (TMAX=256 = 25.6°C, PRCP=12 = 1.2mm); GSOM/GSOY are already scaled
• Climate normals: for any NORMAL_* dataset, use startDate=2010-01-01 and endDate=2010-12-31 — that is the API proxy year regardless of which 30-year period is described
• Returns flat tuples of { date, datatype, station, value, attributes } with pagination metadata

noaa_climate_search_storm_events

Search the NCEI Storm Events Database — a different NOAA corpus from the CDO tools above.