noaa-marine-mcp-server

Get Ocean Observations

noaa_marine_get_ocean_observations

Read-only

Live sub-surface oceanographic observations from an NDBC station's water-quality sensors: at each reported depth, water temperature, conductivity, salinity, dissolved oxygen as both saturation percent and concentration in ppm, chlorophyll, turbidity, pH, and redox potential. This is the water-column counterpart to noaa_marine_get_conditions, which returns surface meteorological and wave data — use this tool for what the water is doing below the surface, that one for weather and sea state at the buoy. It returns the most recent observation as one reading per reported depth, and most stations report a single depth while some report several at the same time; sensor coverage is sparse, most stations populating only water temperature and salinity, and any value the station did not report comes back null rather than a fabricated zero, as do latitude and longitude for a station absent from the NDBC active-stations list. Sub-surface sensors are on only a subset of NDBC stations, so find one with noaa_marine_find_stations using source="ndbc" and types=["water_quality"], which filters on NDBC's own water-quality catalog flag — the flag and actual .ocean availability drift, so this tool reads any station that serves the file and returns observations_not_found for one that does not.

Input Schema

Name	Required	Description	Default
`station_id`	Yes	NDBC station ID (mostly 5-character alphanumeric codes, e.g. "44033" or "TIBC1"; some are 7-digit numbers). Obtain from noaa_marine_find_stations with source="ndbc" and types=["water_quality"].

Output Schema

Name	Required	Description
`error`	No	Present when the call failed. Absent on success.
`source`	No	Data source — always "ndbc" for this tool.
`latitude`	No	Station latitude in decimal degrees. Null when the station is absent from the NDBC active-stations list — the .ocean feed carries observations but no coordinates.
`readings`	No	Per-depth readings sharing the most recent observation timestamp, in NDBC source order.
`longitude`	No	Station longitude in decimal degrees. Null when the station is absent from the NDBC active-stations list.
`station_id`	No	Station ID echoed from the request — for chaining.
`observed_at`	No	ISO 8601 UTC timestamp of the observation. Always a valid instant — a row whose upstream time columns are malformed is rejected rather than timestamped with the current time.
`station_name`	No	Station name from the NDBC active stations list.
`reading_count`	No	Number of per-depth readings in the latest observation (usually 1).

Schema Changelog

Changes observed during successful MCP inspections.

Changed1 schema field changedOct 29, 2026

changedInput schema / properties / station_id / description

Previous value: -"NDBC station ID (5-character alphanumeric, e.g. \"44033\" or \"TIBC1\"). Obtain from noaa_marine_find_stations with source=\"ndbc\" and types=[\"water_quality\"]."New value: +"NDBC station ID (mostly 5-character alphanumeric codes, e.g. \"44033\" or \"TIBC1\"; some are 7-digit numbers). Obtain from noaa_marine_find_stations with source=\"ndbc\" and types=[\"water_quality\"]."

Changed2 schema fields changedSep 17, 2026

changedInput schema / properties / station_id / description

Previous value: -"NDBC station ID (5-character alphanumeric, e.g. \"44033\" or \"TIBC1\"). Obtain candidate IDs from noaa_marine_find_stations with source=\"ndbc\" — ocean-sensor coverage is not flagged in the catalog, so this is a best-effort call on any NDBC station."New value: +"NDBC station ID (5-character alphanumeric, e.g. \"44033\" or \"TIBC1\"). Obtain from noaa_marine_find_stations with source=\"ndbc\" and types=[\"water_quality\"]."

changedOutput schema / properties / observed_at / description

Previous value: -"ISO 8601 UTC timestamp of the observation."New value: +"ISO 8601 UTC timestamp of the observation. Always a valid instant — a row whose upstream time columns are malformed is rejected rather than timestamped with the current time."

Changed22 schema fields changedSep 16, 2026
- removedOutput schema / properties / latitude / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / latitude / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / longitude / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / longitude / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / chlorophyll_ug_l / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / chlorophyll_ug_l / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / conductivity_ms_cm / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / conductivity_ms_cm / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / oxygen_percent / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / oxygen_percent / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / oxygen_ppm / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / oxygen_ppm / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / ph / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / ph / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / redox_mv / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / redox_mv / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / salinity_psu / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / salinity_psu / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / turbidity_ftu / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / turbidity_ftu / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```
- removedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / water_temp_c / anyOf
```
Removed value: -[
-  {
-    "type": "number"
-  },
-  {
-    "type": "null"
-  }
-]
```
- addedOutput schema / properties / readings / items / properties / water_temp_c / type
```
Added value: +[
+  "number",
+  "null"
+]
```

Changed6 schema fields changedAug 25, 2026

changedInput schema / $schema

Previous value: -"http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"New value: +"https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema"

addedInput schema / additionalProperties
```
Added value: +false
```

changedOutput schema / $schema

Previous value: -"http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#"New value: +"https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema"

addedOutput schema / anyOf

Added value: +[
+  {
+    "not": {
+      "required": [
+        "error"
+      ]
+    },
+    "required": [
+      "station_id",
+      "station_name",
+      "latitude",
+      "longitude",
+      "observed_at",
+      "source",
+      "reading_count",
+      "readings"
+    ]
+  },
+  {
+    "required": [
+      "error"
+    ]
+  }
+]

addedOutput schema / properties / error

Added value: +{
+  "additionalProperties": {},
+  "description": "Present when the call failed. Absent on success.",
+  "properties": {
+    "code": {
+      "description": "JSON-RPC error code for this failure.",
+      "maximum": 9007199254740991,
+      "minimum": -9007199254740991,
+      "type": "integer"
+    },
+    "data": {
+      "additionalProperties": {},
+      "properties": {
+        "reason": {
+          "description": "Machine-readable failure mode. Declared by this tool: `observations_not_found`: NDBC returned 404 for the station — no .ocean oceanographic file exists for it. `no_ocean_data`: The .ocean file exists but has no usable data rows — station offline or every depth row missing. Other values are possible when a failure originates below the handler.",
+          "examples": [
+            "observations_not_found",
+            "no_ocean_data"
+          ],
+          "type": "string"
+        },
+        "recovery": {
+          "additionalProperties": {},
+          "description": "Actionable next step for the caller.",
+          "properties": {
+            "hint": {
+              "type": "string"
+            }
+          },
+          "required": [
+            "hint"
+          ],
+          "type": "object"
+        },
+        "retryable": {
+          "description": "Whether retrying may succeed.",
+          "type": "boolean"
+        }
+      },
+      "type": "object"
+    },
+    "message": {
+      "description": "Human-readable description of what went wrong.",
+      "type": "string"
+    }
+  },
+  "required": [
+    "code",
+    "message"
+  ],
+  "type": "object"
+}

removedOutput schema / required

Removed value: -[
-  "station_id",
-  "station_name",
-  "latitude",
-  "longitude",
-  "observed_at",
-  "source",
-  "reading_count",
-  "readings"
-]

AddedJul 16, 2026

TDQS

A4.6/5.0

Behavior4/5

Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?

Annotations declare readOnlyHint and openWorldHint, and the description goes well beyond them: it discloses that only the most recent observation is returned, one reading per reported depth, that sensor coverage is sparse, that unreported values come back null rather than zero, and that out-of-catalog stations yield null lat/lon. It also names the observations_not_found failure mode. It stops short of describing pagination/rate limits, but for a single-file reader that is minor.

Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.

Conciseness4/5

Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?

Front-loaded with what the tool returns, then the sibling contrast, then availability caveats — a sensible ordering. The third sentence is dense and packs several distinct caveats (nulls, lat/lon, catalog drift, error name) into one run-on, costing some readability, but little is genuinely redundant.

Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.

Completeness5/5

Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?

With an output schema present and a fully documented single parameter, the description covers the remaining gaps an agent needs: data shape (one reading per depth), sparsity, null semantics, station discovery path, and the failure mode. Nothing required to call it correctly is missing.

Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.

Parameters4/5

Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?

Schema coverage is 100% with the pattern and sourcing instructions already present, so baseline would be 3. The description adds real selection semantics: the water_quality catalog flag and actual file availability can disagree, so the agent should expect the tool to read any station that serves the file regardless of the flag — information the schema does not convey.

Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.

Purpose5/5

Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?

Names a specific verb and resource ('Live sub-surface oceanographic observations from an NDBC station's water-quality sensors') and immediately enumerates the measured quantities, so the agent knows exactly what data comes back. It explicitly contrasts itself with noaa_marine_get_conditions ('the water-column counterpart'), making sibling disambiguation unambiguous.

Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.

Usage Guidelines5/5

Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?

Gives an explicit routing rule: use this for what the water is doing below the surface, and get_conditions for weather and sea state. It also tells the agent how to obtain a valid station (noaa_marine_find_stations with source="ndbc" and types=["water_quality"]) and warns that the catalog flag drifts from actual .ocean availability.

Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.

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