🌦️ NOAA Climate Data Scraper

Fetch and normalize daily weather observations from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). Returns cleaned, human-readable climate data with unit conversion, station name resolution, and statistical summaries.

Value-add: Raw NOAA API returns tenths-of-degrees and padded strings — this actor normalizes everything to real units (°F/°C, inches/mm, mph/m/s), resolves cryptic station IDs to city names, and provides both machine-readable and human-readable output.

✨ Features

• No API key required — NOAA's NCEI API is completely free and open
• Global coverage — 100,000+ weather stations worldwide (US + international via GHCND prefix)
• Automatic normalization — converts NOAA's raw format (tenths of degrees, space-padded strings) to clean numeric values
• Station name resolution — maps cryptic IDs like USW00094728 to "NYC Central Park"
• Unit conversion — choose Standard (Fahrenheit, inches, mph) or Metric (Celsius, mm, m/s)
• Rich data types — temperature, precipitation, snowfall, wind speed/direction, weather type codes
• Statistical summary — min, max, avg temps; total precipitation and snowfall

📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
stations	Array	✅ Yes	["USW00094728"]	NOAA station IDs (e.g. USW00094728 for NYC). Use GHCND: prefix for global stations
dataTypes	Array	No	["TMAX","TMIN","PRCP"]	Data types to fetch
startDate	String	✅ Yes	"2024-01-01"	Start date (YYYY-MM-DD)
endDate	String	✅ Yes	"2024-12-31"	End date (YYYY-MM-DD)
units	Select	No	"standard"	standard (F/in/mph) or metric (C/mm/m/s)
maxResults	Integer	No	5000	Max daily records to return
stationLookup	Boolean	No	true	Resolve station IDs to city/state names

Available Data Types

Code	Description	Units (Standard / Metric)
TMAX	Maximum temperature	°F / °C
TMIN	Minimum temperature	°F / °C
TAVG	Average temperature	°F / °C
PRCP	Precipitation	inches / mm
SNOW	Snowfall	inches / mm
SNWD	Snow depth	inches / mm
AWND	Average wind speed	mph / m/s
WSF2	Fastest 2-minute wind	mph / m/s
WDF2	Direction of fastest wind	degrees / degrees
WT01–WT22	Weather type indicators	0/1 flag

Popular Station IDs

Station ID	Location
USW00094728	New York (Central Park)
USW00094846	Chicago (O'Hare)
USW00023174	Los Angeles (Downtown)
USW00003928	Miami (International)
USW00023234	San Francisco (Airport)
USW00024233	Seattle (Airport)
USW00023062	Denver (Airport)
USW00012960	Houston (Hobby)
USW00014739	Boston (Logan)
USW00023188	Phoenix (Sky Harbor)

📤 Example Input

{
  "stations": ["USW00094728", "USW00094846"],
  "dataTypes": ["TMAX", "TMIN", "PRCP", "SNOW"],
  "startDate": "2024-06-01",
  "endDate": "2024-06-07",
  "units": "standard",
  "maxResults": 100
}

📊 Example Output

The actor produces three output formats:

1. Dataset (normalized JSON records)

{
  "stationId": "USW00094728",
  "stationName": "NYC Central Park",
  "city": "New York",
  "state": "NY",
  "country": "US",
  "date": "2024-06-01",
  "units": "standard",
  "TMAX_value": 78.0,
  "TMAX_label": "Max Temp",
  "TMAX_unit": "°F",
  "TMIN_value": 62.0,
  "TMIN_label": "Min Temp",
  "TMIN_unit": "°F",
  "PRCP_value": 0.0,
  "PRCP_label": "Precipitation",
  "PRCP_unit": "in",
  "SNOW_value": 0.0,
  "SNOW_label": "Snowfall",
  "SNOW_unit": "in"
}

2. OUTPUT (human-readable table)

====================================================================================================
  NOAA CLIMATE DATA — NORMALIZED WEATHER OBSERVATIONS
====================================================================================================
  Records: 14  |  Date Range: 2024-06-01 to 2024-06-07
  Units: standard  |  Stations: 2

Date         Station               TMAX    TMIN    PRCP    SNOW    AWND
────         ──────               ────    ────    ────    ────    ────
2024-06-01   NYC Central Park      78.0°   62.0°    0.00    0.0     N/A
2024-06-02   NYC Central Park      82.0°   65.0°    0.00    0.0     N/A
...

3. STATS (machine-readable)

{
  "total_records": 14,
  "stations_found": ["USW00094728", "USW00094846"],
  "data_types": ["TMAX", "TMIN", "PRCP", "SNOW"],
  "TMAX_min": 72.0,
  "TMAX_max": 85.0,
  "TMAX_avg": 78.5,
  "TMIN_min": 58.0,
  "TMIN_max": 68.0,
  "PRCP_total": 0.45
}

🎯 Use Cases

• Agriculture & Farming — Track growing degree days, frost risk, and precipitation for crop planning
• Insurance Underwriting — Analyze historical weather patterns for risk assessment
• Energy Trading — Correlate temperature data with energy demand forecasts
• Event Planning — Check historical weather for optimal outdoor event dates
• Climate Research — Gather long-term climate observations across multiple stations
• Supply Chain / Logistics — Monitor weather conditions along shipping routes
• Construction — Verify weather conditions for project delay claims

📚 Data Source

All data provided by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) via the Climate Data Online (CDO) API. Data is public domain and free to use.

• API: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/services/data/v1
• Dataset: daily-summaries (GHCND — Global Historical Climatology Network Daily)
• Coverage: 100,000+ stations worldwide, records from 1763 to present

💰 Pricing

Pay-per-result pricing: $2.00 per 1,000 results. Each result is one normalized daily weather observation with station metadata.

This is a premium value-add actor — unlike raw NOAA scrapers, it normalizes cryptic station IDs to city names, converts NOAA's internal unit format to real-world units, and provides statistical summaries. Ideal for business analysts, researchers, and data pipelines.