Noaa Gov NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO) API
✓ Official Vendor SpecData EnrichmentData TransformationapiKey13 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Query NOAA's climate dataset catalog and pull observed weather and climate values by station, location, and date range across 13 CDO v2 endpoints.
Use for: I need to find historical daily temperature for a specific weather station, List all NOAA datasets that include precipitation data, Find weather stations within a specific US zip code, Get monthly average temperature for a city for the last decade
Not supported: Does not handle real-time forecasts, severe weather alerts, or marine and aviation products — use for NOAA Climate Data Online historical observations only.
NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO) v2 exposes the National Centers for Environmental Information's archive of climate datasets, data categories, data types, locations, stations, and observed values. Agents can list and filter datasets like GHCND and GSOM, drill into the data types and categories each dataset publishes, look up monitoring stations and location codes, and pull observed values across date ranges and station sets via /data. The service is rate limited to 5 requests per second and 10,000 per day per token, and authentication is handled by an apiKey passed in the token header.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO) API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO) API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO) API.
List available climate datasets and inspect their metadata via /datasets and /datasets/{id}
Discover data categories and data types tied to a dataset through /datacategories and /datatypes
Look up monitoring stations and filter by dataset, location, or geographic extent via /stations
Resolve location codes for cities, counties, states, and zip codes through /locations and /locationcategories
Pull observed values for selected stations and date ranges from /data with units and limit controls
Filter dataset coverage by date range and data type to narrow large result sets before /data calls
Use Cases
Patterns agents use NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO) API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Climate Trend Analysis
Researchers and ESG teams need consistent historical climate observations to compute trends across decades. The CDO API exposes datasets like GHCND and GSOM with /data endpoints that accept stationid, datatypeid, startdate, and enddate parameters, returning structured observation rows. By chaining /stations, /datatypes, and /data calls an agent can build a reproducible pipeline for temperature, precipitation, and snow trend analysis without scraping NCEI bulk archives.
Call /stations with locationid for a US state, then /data with datasetid=GHCND, the chosen stationid, datatypeid=TAVG, startdate=2014-01-01, enddate=2024-01-01
Insurance Risk Geolocation
Climate-aware underwriting workflows need historical observations tied to specific zip codes or counties. The /locations and /locationcategories endpoints resolve zip and FIPS codes to NOAA location ids, which can then be passed to /stations and /data. This produces a structured chain from a policy address to nearby station observations and historical extreme values for a risk score.
Resolve a US zip to a NOAA locationid via /locations?locationcategoryid=ZIP, list /stations for that location, and pull /data for the GSOM dataset over the last 30 years
Operational Weather Reporting
Operations and logistics teams need a daily report of station-level conditions across a fixed set of monitored sites. The /data endpoint accepts a list of stationids and a date range, returning observed values for each datatype requested. With /datasets and /datatypes the report can adapt automatically when NOAA adds or deprecates a data type without breaking the pipeline.
Call /data with datasetid=GHCND, a comma-separated list of stationids, datatypeid=PRCP, and yesterday's date as both startdate and enddate
AI Agent Climate Lookup
An LLM-powered agent answering questions like 'what was the average rainfall in San Francisco last summer?' can use Jentic to find and call the right CDO endpoint without hand-coding location and station resolution. Jentic search routes the question to /data with the correct dataset, datatype, and date range derived from intent, while the NOAA token stays in the vault.
Use Jentic to chain /locations, /stations, and /data to answer 'average daily precipitation for San Francisco in summer 2024'
Key Endpoints
13 endpoints — noaa climate data online (cdo) v2 exposes the national centers for environmental information's archive of climate datasets, data categories, data types, locations, stations, and observed values.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
GET
/datasets
List available NOAA CDO datasets
GET
/datasets/{id}
Get metadata for a specific dataset
GET
/datatypes
List data types reported across datasets
GET
/locations
List location codes filtered by category
GET
/stations
List monitoring stations filtered by dataset or location
GET
/data
Retrieve observed values for a dataset, station, datatype, and date range
GET
/datacategories
List data categories grouping data types
GET
/datasets
List available NOAA CDO datasets
GET
/datasets/{id}
Get metadata for a specific dataset
GET
/datatypes
List data types reported across datasets
GET
/locations
List location codes filtered by category
GET
/stations
List monitoring stations filtered by dataset or location
GET
/data
Retrieve observed values for a dataset, station, datatype, and date range
GET
/datacategories
List data categories grouping data types
Why Jentic?
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
NOAA CDO tokens are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault and attached to the token header on each call. Agents receive scoped access — the raw token never enters the agent context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search by intent (e.g. 'historical daily temperature for a station') and Jentic returns the matching /data, /stations, or /locations operation with its parameter schema, eliminating manual reading of the CDO docs.
Time to first call
Direct integration: 1-2 days to handle token auth, location/station resolution, and the multi-step query pattern across /datasets, /datatypes, and /data. Through Jentic: under 1 hour — search, load, execute.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO) API through Jentic.
What authentication does the NOAA CDO API use?
NOAA CDO uses an apiKey passed as the token header. Request a free token from the NOAA CDO portal. Through Jentic the token is stored in the vault and injected on every call without exposing it to the agent.
Can I get historical daily temperature data with the NOAA CDO API?
Yes. Call /data with datasetid=GHCND, the stationid for the location, datatypeid=TAVG (or TMIN/TMAX), and your startdate and enddate. The response returns daily observed values with units.
What are the rate limits for the NOAA CDO API?
NOAA enforces 5 requests per second and 10,000 requests per day per token, as declared in the spec's tokenAuth description. Jentic handles 429 responses with backoff and surfaces a clear error if the daily quota is exhausted.
How do I find weather stations near a specific zip code through Jentic?
Run pip install jentic, search Jentic for 'find noaa stations near a zip code', then chain /locations?locationcategoryid=ZIP to resolve the zip to a NOAA locationid and /stations?locationid=... to list nearby stations. Jentic injects the token automatically.
Is the NOAA CDO API free to use?
Yes. Tokens are issued free of charge from the NOAA CDO portal. Usage is bound by the 5 req/sec and 10,000 req/day quotas per token.
Which datasets are available through the NOAA CDO API?
Call /datasets to list the full catalog, including daily summaries (GHCND), monthly summaries (GSOM), normals (NORMAL_DLY, NORMAL_MLY), and other long-running NCEI products. /datasets/{id} returns coverage metadata.
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