AirNow Hourly Obs Fetch

Core Goal

• Fetch AirNow Hourly AQ Obs data files for one UTC window.
• Filter rows by mission bounding box and requested pollutant parameters.
• Return one normalized JSON record per site-hour-parameter for downstream processing.
• Keep execution deterministic with retries, throttling, and local safety caps.

Repository Policy

• This is the canonical AirNow station-observation skill in this repository.
• When eco-council or OpenClaw assigns a raw artifact path, write this skill's full JSON payload to that exact path with --output.
• Do not treat dry-run output as collected evidence.

Required Environment

• Configure runtime by environment variables (see references/env.md).
• Start from assets/config.example.env.
• Load env values before running commands:

set -a
source assets/config.example.env
set +a

Workflow

1. Validate effective configuration.

python3 scripts/airnow_hourly_obs_fetch.py check-config --pretty

2. Dry-run to inspect target hour files and filters.

python3 scripts/airnow_hourly_obs_fetch.py fetch \
  --bbox=-123.5,37.0,-121.5,38.8 \
  --start-datetime 2026-03-22T00:00:00Z \
  --end-datetime 2026-03-22T02:00:00Z \
  --parameter PM25 \
  --parameter OZONE \
  --dry-run \
  --pretty

3. Run the fetch and write output payload.

python3 scripts/airnow_hourly_obs_fetch.py fetch \
  --bbox=-123.5,37.0,-121.5,38.8 \
  --start-datetime 2026-03-22T00:00:00Z \
  --end-datetime 2026-03-22T02:00:00Z \
  --parameter PM25 \
  --parameter OZONE \
  --parameter NO2 \
  --output ./data/airnow-hourly-obs.json \
  --pretty

Output Record Shape

Each output item in records is one site-hour-parameter observation with fields:

• aqsid, site_name, status, epa_region
• latitude, longitude, country_code, state_name
• observed_at_utc, data_source, reporting_areas
• parameter_name, aqi_value, aqi_kind
• raw_concentration, unit, measured
• source_file_url

The full raw payload also keeps request metadata, transport stats, validation output, and file-level failure details for downstream auditing.

Scope Boundaries

• This skill consumes AirNow hourly file products only.
• This skill does not geocode place names.
• This skill does not do AQI health interpretation or policy judgment.
• This skill treats file data as preliminary and for analysis support, not regulatory decisions.
• This skill is the canonical AirNow fetch interface for this repository.

References

• references/env.md
• references/airnow-hourly-obs-api-notes.md
• references/airnow-hourly-obs-limitations.md
• references/openclaw-chaining-templates.md

Script

• scripts/airnow_hourly_obs_fetch.py