NOAA NCEI Natural Hazards API

Base URL

https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazel/hazard-service/api/v1

Authentication

No API key and no registration. United States federal government open data.

Rate limit

No published limit. These are historical catalogues that change rarely.

Pricing

Free, public domain.

CORS

Enabled — callable directly from browser JavaScript

Official docs

Read the docs

Every request below was executed against the live API on 2026-08-21, and the response shown is the real body it returned — not an illustration.

curl 'https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazel/hazard-service/api/v1/tsunamis/events?minYear=2011&maxYear=2011&itemsPerPage=2'

const res = await fetch("https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazel/hazard-service/api/v1/tsunamis/events?minYear=2011&maxYear=2011&itemsPerPage=2");
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${res.status}`);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

res = requests.get("https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazel/hazard-service/api/v1/tsunamis/events?minYear=2011&maxYear=2011&itemsPerPage=2", timeout=20)
res.raise_for_status()
print(res.json())

{
  "items": [
    {
      "id": 5406,
      "year": 2011,
      "month": 2,
      "day": 11,
      "hour": 20,
      "minute": 5,
      "second": 30.7,
      "eventValidity": 4,
      "causeCode": 1,
      "eqMagnitude": 6.8,
      "earthquakeEventId": 9776,
      "numDeposits": 0,
      "country": "CHILE",
      "locationName": "CENTRAL CHILE",
      "regionCode": 89,
      "latitude": -36.474,
      "longitude": -73.125,
      "maxWaterHeight": 0.15,
      "numRunups": 1,
      "warningStatusId": 4,
      "publish": true,
      "eqDepth": 28,
      "oceanicTsunami": true
    },
    {
      "id": 5407,
      "year": 2011,
      "month": 2,
      "day": 21,
      "hour": 23,
      "minute": 51,
      "second": 42.3,
      "eventValidity": 2,
      "causeCode": 3,
      "eqMagnitude": 6.1,
      "earthquakeEventId": 9779,
      "numDeposits": 0,
      "country": "NEW ZEALAND",
      "locationName": "SOUTH ISLAND",
      "regionCode": 81,
      "latitude": -43.583,
      "longitude": 172.68,
      "maxWaterHeight": 3.5,
      "numRunups": 1,
      "deathsTotal": 185,
      "deathsAmountOrderTotal": 3,
      "injuriesTotal": 1500,
      "injuriesAmountOrderTotal": 4,
      "damageMillionsDollarsTotal": 15000,
      "damageAmountOrderTotal": 4,
      "housesDestroyedTotal": 100000,
      "housesDestroyedAmountOrderTotal": 4,
      "publish": true,
      "eqDepth": 6,
      "oceanicTsunami": true
    }
  ],
  "page": 1,
  "totalPages": 11,
  "itemsPerPage": 2,
  "totalItems": 21
}

itemsarray

The matching hazard events.

items[].idinteger

Database identifier for the event.

items[].year / month / day / hour / minute / secondinteger / float

Event time as separate components, not a timestamp. Historical entries are frequently missing the finer parts.

items[].country / locationName / regionCodestring / integer

Where it happened, with country names in uppercase and a numeric ocean or region code.

items[].latitude / longitudefloat

Source coordinates in decimal degrees.

items[].eqMagnitude / eqDepthfloat / integer

Magnitude and depth in kilometres of the source earthquake, when there was one.

items[].earthquakeEventIdinteger

Link into the companion earthquakes catalogue for the source event.

items[].maxWaterHeightfloat

Maximum observed water height in metres across all runup observations.

items[].numRunupsinteger

How many coastal runup observations exist. Zero means instrumentally detected with no observed coastal effect.

items[].numDepositsinteger

Count of associated geological deposit records, which is how prehistoric events are evidenced.

items[].eventValidityinteger

Confidence grade for the record, from definite down to erroneous. Filter on it before analysis.

items[].causeCodeinteger

What generated the tsunami — earthquake, volcanic activity, landslide or meteorological.

items[].oceanicTsunami / publishboolean

Whether it propagated across an ocean basin, and whether the record is published.

• Map historical tsunami sources for a coastline
• Analyse the relationship between earthquake magnitude and water height
• Build a natural hazards timeline for a region
• Cross-reference tsunami events with their source earthquakes