Search the AQUAVIEW catalog — a comprehensive collection of 268K+ global oceanographic, atmospheric, and marine datasets from 15 sources (NOAA, NDBC, IOOS, WOD, CoastWatch, etc.), intended for scientific research, data analysis, and environmental monitoring.
You must provide at least one of: q, bbox, datetime, collections, filter, or token.
Hint: When the user asks for a region, prefer the 'bbox' parameter over including region name in 'q'. Use the geo_hints resource for common bounding boxes.
Args:
q: Free-text search across title, description, and keywords (e.g., "sea surface temperature"). Case-insensitive, OR logic across terms.
bbox: Bounding box as "west,south,east,north" (e.g., "-98,24,-80,31" for Gulf of Mexico).
datetime: Temporal filter. Single datetime, range ("2020-01-01T00:00:00Z/2024-12-31T23:59:59Z"), or open-ended ("../2024-01-01T00:00:00Z" or "2020-01-01T00:00:00Z/..").
collections: Comma-separated collection IDs to search within (e.g., "NOAA,NDBC,WOD"). Use list_collections to see available IDs.
exclude_collections: Comma-separated collection IDs to omit from results (e.g., "INCIDENT_NEWS" to drop oil-spill reports from free-text searches). Applied as a CQL2 NOT filter, so it composes with `filter`.
filter: CQL2-JSON filter as an object or JSON-encoded string. Supports flat and nested property paths. Flat example: {"op": "=", "args": [{"property": "aquaview:institution"}, "NOAA/NCEI"]}. Nested example (filter by per-variable stats summary): {"op": "<=", "args": [{"property": "aquaview:column_stats_summary.variables.Pressure.min"}, 10]}. Supported operators: =, <>, <, >, <=, >=, like, between, in, and, or, not.
license: Comma-separated SPDX license id(s) to match exactly (e.g., "CC-BY-4.0,CC0-1.0"). Also accepts the controlled extra values "public-domain", "proprietary", "various", "unknown". Matched against `aquaview:license`, which is normalized on every item regardless of source.
sortby: Sort specification as "+field,-field" (e.g., "+properties.datetime,-id"). + = ascending, - = descending.
limit: Number of results to return, 1-100. Defaults to 10.
token: Pagination token from a previous response's 'next_token' field. Pass this to get the next page of results.
fields: Comma-separated list of fields to include in results (e.g., "id,geometry,properties.title"). Reduces response size. When set in CSV mode, emits projected columns (no canonical columns, no asset_keys, no `## assets` section).
include_assets: If False (default), asset download records are omitted to save ~60-70% of response tokens; CSV mode still emits a capped `asset_keys` hint column (e.g. `column_stats;overview;gdac_prof;+[N]`) so an agent can see what kinds of assets exist. To get full URLs, call `get_item(collection, item_id)` for the specific id. If True, assets are included inline (full dict for JSON/TOON; `## assets` section with item_id,key,href,type,title rows for CSV).
output_format: "csv" (default, sectioned CSV — canonical columns including asset_keys hint), "json", or "toon".
Returns:
Search results with metadata (total matched, returned, next_token) and items.
CSV mode emits `## metadata` + `## items` sections and a `## assets` section
when include_assets=True; columns are id,collection,bbox,datetime,title,institution,
platform_type,cdm_data_type,variables,keywords,source_url,description,
column_stats_summary,geometry,asset_keys. JSON/TOON return the STAC feature shape,
with the `assets` dict present only when include_assets=True.