Query NOAA CO-OPS Tides and Currents data via the public REST API
domain: api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Identify the target station's 7-character ID via the station map or the companion Metadata API
Call GET .../api/prod/datagetter with required parameters: station, product (e.g. water_level, predictions, currents, hourly_height), and a date range (begin_date/end_date, begin_date+range, or a shortcut like date=latest)
For any water-level product, include the mandatory datum parameter (e.g. MLLW, MSL, NAVD)
Set units, time_zone, and for currents data a bin number (required for most current stations)
Choose a response format (json/xml/csv) and include a free-text application identifier string; no API key or authentication is required
Respect documented per-interval data-length limits (e.g. 1-minute data capped to 4 days per request, hourly capped to 1 year) by chunking long date ranges into multiple requests
Known gotchas
There is no API key, but NOAA throttles heavy per-client load without publishing exact numeric limits, so high-volume integrations should self-regulate with delays between calls
Verified (non-preliminary) water level data is only finalized on a rolling monthly basis, so code should not assume the previous day's data is already verified
Parameter interactions are easy to get wrong (e.g. datum is mandatory for most water-level products but not Air Gap, daily_mean requires time_zone=lst and Great Lakes stations only) and wrong combinations return a scoped error rather than partial data
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