AirNow Service

EPA AirNow provides air quality forecasts and real-time observations from monitoring stations across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Overview

The AirNow service provides access to:

Air quality forecasts (RSS feeds)
Action day alerts (RSS feeds)
Current conditions (RSS feeds)
Current observations (REST API)
Historical observations (REST API)

Available Tools

See the Tools Reference for complete tool documentation.

Quick Example

curl -X POST \
  -H "x-api-key: dev-key-12345" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "id": 1,
    "method": "tools/call",
    "params": {
      "name": "airnow.get_forecast_rss",
      "arguments": {
        "state": "CA",
        "city": "San Francisco"
      }
    }
  }' \
  http://localhost:3001/api/v1/services/airnow/mcp

Data Formats

Cleaned Format (Default)

Normalized, structured data with consistent units and naming. Extracted from RSS feeds or REST API responses.

Raw Format

Original RSS XML or REST API JSON format as received from AirNow.

Location Identifiers

AirNow supports multiple location identifiers:

State/City: 2-letter state code (e.g., "CA") and optional city name (e.g., "San Francisco")
ZIP Code: 5-digit ZIP code for REST API endpoints
Coordinates: Latitude/longitude for REST API endpoints

Authentication

RSS Feeds: Publicly available, no authentication required
REST API: Requires API key (register at airnowapi.org (opens in a new tab))

Set the AIRNOW_API_KEY environment variable to use REST API endpoints.

Examples

See AirNow Examples for more usage examples.

Examples Tools Reference