drought.national.stats
Retrieve weekly US national drought statistics from the USDA/NOAA US Drought Monitor for a date range. Returns drought coverage by severity level (D0 Abnormally Dry through D4 Exceptional Drought) for CONUS and the total US (including Alaska/Hawaii/territories), reported as either square miles ("...
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What drought.national.stats does on Apibase
AI agents call drought.national.stats to retrieve information from Apibase without modifying anything. It is typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
| Parameter | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
metric | string | — | Measurement unit: "area" returns drought coverage in square miles (default); "percent" returns drought coverage as a percentage of total US land area. |
end_date | string | Yes | End date for the query range in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. "2024-01-08"). Maximum range is 1 year from start_date. |
start_date | string | Yes | Start date for the query range in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. "2024-01-01"). USDM publishes weekly on Tuesdays; dates snap to the nearest release. |
statistics_type | string | — | How drought levels are counted: "cumulative" (default) means each D-level includes worse levels (D1 includes D1+D2+D3+D4); "categorical" means each level is non |
Parameters from the server's own tool schema.
Why drought.national.stats is rated Low
Tool retrieves historical drought data with no side effects or modifications.
From the tool's definition Retrieve weekly US national drought statistics from the USDA/NOAA
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
The rule that runs drought.national.stats safely
PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway: it sits between your AI agents and Apibase, and checks every tool call against a rule you set before the call runs. Nothing changes on the server itself. For drought.national.stats, this is the rule to start with:
drought.national.stats is read-only, so it stays allowed. Everything else on the server is denied unless you say otherwise.
The button opens the PolicyLayer dashboard: create your workspace, connect Apibase, apply this rule, and every drought.national.stats call is checked against it from then on.
Questions about drought.national.stats
Retrieve weekly US national drought statistics from the USDA/NOAA US Drought Monitor for a date range. Returns drought coverage by severity level (D0 Abnormally Dry through D4 Exceptional Drought) for CONUS and the total US (including Alaska/Hawaii/territories), reported as either square miles ("area") or percent of total land area ("percent"). Choose "cumulative" statistics_type to see how much area is in each level or worse (D1 includes D2+D3+D4); choose "categorical" for non-overlapping, mutually exclusive counts. Data is published weekly on Tuesdays — dates automatically snap to the nearest valid release. Maximum query window: 1 year. Useful for climate risk analysis, agricultural planning, and drought trend monitoring. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Apibase MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
drought.national.stats accepts 4 parameters: metric, end_date, start_date, statistics_type. Required: end_date, start_date. The full parameter table on this page comes from the server's own tool schema.
Register the Apibase MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for drought.national.stats: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Apibase. Nothing to install.
drought.national.stats is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the drought.national.stats rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for drought.national.stats. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
drought.national.stats is provided by the Apibase MCP server (apibase-mcp-client). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
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