Noaa Swpc

What Noaa Swpc does

Noaa Swpc provides MCP access to keyless JSON products from NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. Its data covers operational space weather conditions and forecasts, including current alerts and warnings, solar wind measurements, geomagnetic activity, aurora probability, GOES X-ray flux, and forecast text.

The integration is independent and unofficial. Data is retrieved from NOAA's services.swpc.noaa.gov/products/... endpoints through the Pipeworx service. It is a fit for agents that need to answer questions about recent solar activity, inspect geomagnetic conditions, or retrieve structured space weather observations.

How it works

The hosted MCP endpoint is:

https://gateway.pipeworx.io/noaa-swpc/mcp

An MCP client can connect to that URL and list the Noaa Swpc tools. The scoped endpoint also exposes shared Pipeworx gateway tools, including routing and discovery functions. The exact tool scope is reported by the connection's initialize response. A full gateway endpoint is also available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp; both endpoints use the same gateway and data sources.

The service can also be called directly over HTTP. For example, a POST request to https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/alerts with an empty JSON body invokes the alerts tool. The gateway supports anonymous calls, and a Pipeworx account can be used for a higher daily call allowance.

For local MCP deployments, @pipeworx/mcp-noaa-swpc runs through npx as a stdio adapter. It forwards requests to the hosted gateway, so it requires network access and has no offline mode.

Setup and configuration

Add the hosted endpoint to an MCP client such as Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "noaa-swpc": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/noaa-swpc/mcp"
    }
  }
}

The local option uses this configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "noaa-swpc": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-noaa-swpc"]
    }
  }
}

Anonymous local calls are capped at 50 per day. A free Pipeworx account raises the limit to 200 calls per day. Add PIPEWORX_API_KEY to the local server environment to authenticate with a key. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 if the local bridge should also list the shared gateway tools. Behind an HTTPS proxy, newer Node.js releases can use the proxy environment with NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1.

Tools and capabilities

• alerts() retrieves current SWPC alerts and warnings.
• solar_wind(window?) returns recent DSCOVR plasma and magnetic-field data for five-minute, one-hour, two-hour, or one-day windows.
• kp_index(window?) provides planetary K index history for the current value, one day, seven days, or 30 days.
• aurora_forecast() returns the 30-minute Ovation forecast for northern or southern regions.
• goes_xray(window?) retrieves recent GOES X-ray flux for six-hour, one-day, three-day, or seven-day periods.
• boulder_kp() returns the real-time Boulder K index.
• forecast_text() returns the raw three-day SWPC forecast.

The service is released under the MIT license.