NOAA Climate Data Online API
Provides access to NOAA's Climate Data Online archive of US weather station observations, climate normals, and historical meteorological records spanning over 150 years across thousands of stations.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Token passed via HTTP header is better practice than query param. Public government data with no PII. Single token grants full access with no scopes.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You need authoritative, government-backed historical US climate data from official weather stations for research, compliance, or long-horizon analysis.
Avoid When
You need current conditions, forecasts, or non-US data — NOAA CDO is a historical archive, not a real-time weather service.
Use Cases
- • Retrieve daily temperature and precipitation records from a specific NOAA weather station for a multi-decade climate trend analysis
- • Look up climate normals (30-year averages) for a US location to baseline current conditions against historical expectations
- • Query available weather stations near a given lat/lon to find the closest authoritative observation source for a location
- • Fetch monthly snowfall totals for a region to support agricultural or infrastructure planning agents
- • Pull storm event records for a date range to enrich insurance underwriting or risk assessment workflows
Not For
- • Real-time or near-real-time weather data — CDO data has a typical lag of 1-2 days minimum
- • Global weather data outside the United States and its territories
- • High-frequency automated polling — the API is designed for research queries, not production real-time feeds
Interface
Authentication
Requires a free token obtained by emailing ncdc.orders@noaa.gov or registering online. Token is passed via the `token` HTTP header on all requests.
Pricing
Free government service. Token registration may take up to 1 business day for email delivery.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ The `datasetid`, `datatypeid`, `stationid`, and `locationid` parameter system is complex and underdocumented — wrong combinations silently return empty results rather than errors
- ⚠ Results are paginated with a default and max limit of 1000 records; large queries require multiple offset-based calls
- ⚠ Station coverage is uneven — many rural areas have sparse or missing data for certain date ranges
- ⚠ Token registration can take up to 24 hours via email, blocking automated environment setup
- ⚠ Date range queries are capped at 1 year per request for some dataset types; longer ranges require multiple calls
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Comprehensive deep-dive: security analysis, reliability audit, agent experience review, cost modeling, competitive positioning, and improvement roadmap for NOAA Climate Data Online API.
AI-powered analysis · PDF + markdown · Delivered within 30 minutes
Package Brief
Quick verdict, integration guide, cost projections, gotchas with workarounds, and alternatives comparison.
Delivered within 10 minutes
Score Monitoring
Get alerted when this package's AF, security, or reliability scores change significantly. Stay ahead of regressions.
Continuous monitoring
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.