CA Air Resources Board API and MCP server

API access

Your AI client reaches CA Air Resources Board through one ParcelOps MCP endpoint, so there is no separate key to hold for it and no per-source client to write. Reaching it takes no credentials of your own.

What this source cannot tell you

• ⚠ Anything outside California — air districts (35 polygons), air basins, and AB 617 community air protection areas (19 selected communities), statewide and United States — CARB offset projects. The point layers publish a state for AZ, CA, FL, ID, IN, MI, MN, MO, NC, NY, OH, OR, PA, SD, UT, VA, VT, WA, and WI (19 states); the forest polygons span the continental United States and Alaska and publish no state field at all. A request past that edge comes back empty rather than approximated.
• ⚠ Offset issuance records reach back to early-action projects and are updated as verifications complete. CARB publishes no vintage stamp on these services.
• ⚠ Anything California Air Resources Board GIS — Air Districts, Air Basins, AB 617 Communities, ARBOC Offset Issuance does not publish. ParcelOps returns this source as it stands and never fills a blank field from a different one.
• ⚠ Air-district and air-basin polygons name the agency with permitting jurisdiction over a location. They are not a permit, an entitlement, an approval, or a compliance determination.
• ⚠ AB 617 selection records where CARB directed community air monitoring, an emissions reduction program, or both. It is a program status, not a measured air-quality reading, and a null result means the point is outside all 19 selected communities rather than that air quality was assessed.
• ⚠ CARB offset projects are national, not California only. The forest layer publishes no state field, so a state filter cannot reach forest polygons; use coordinates instead.
• ⚠ Net credits issued is a NET figure and can be negative, which signals reversed or invalidated credits. Overlapping project ids frequently cover identical acreage, so credits and acreage must never be summed across records without deduplicating on geometry first.
• ⚠ Acreage is the CARB web-map GIS figure for the mapped polygon — cartographic, not surveyed or deeded. A forest offset project also carries a long-running management covenant whose terms live in the project documentation, not in this data.
• ⚠ Emissions inventory records (facility tonnages, criteria pollutants, toxics, health-risk screening scores) and cap-and-trade permit, auction, and compliance data are NOT exposed by this connector. They publish as rotating bulk files, undocumented JSONP, XLSX, and PDF, and are deferred to a later phase.
• ⚠ CARB publishes no API contract, versioning, or deprecation policy for these services, and arb.ca.gov sits behind a web application firewall that answers a rejected request with HTTP 200 and an HTML page. This connector detects that body and raises an error rather than reporting an empty result.
• ⚠ Reuse rests on the State of California statewide public-domain default; CARB publishes no dataset-level licence grant, so carry the attribution "California Air Resources Board (CARB)".

Methods (4)

A method is one call your agent can make against this source.

• getAirDistrictContext

  read

  Which CARB air district, air basin, and AB 617 community area govern one set of coordinates.

  What you must providelatitudelongitude

  FreshnessScheduled (source-level)
  Input schema

  {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "latitude": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": -90,
        "maximum": 90
      },
      "longitude": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": -180,
        "maximum": 180
      }
    },
    "required": [
      "latitude",
      "longitude"
    ],
    "additionalProperties": false
  }

  California only. Outside the state every polygon is null.

• searchAb617Communities

  read

  Search AB 617 community air protection areas at a point, near a point, or across the state list.

  FreshnessScheduled (source-level)
  Input schema

  {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "latitude": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": -90,
        "maximum": 90
      },
      "longitude": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": -180,
        "maximum": 180
      },
      "radiusMiles": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": 0.1,
        "maximum": 100
      },
      "communityName": {
        "type": "string",
        "minLength": 2,
        "maxLength": 200
      },
      "districtAcronym": {
        "type": "string",
        "minLength": 2,
        "maxLength": 40
      },
      "yearSelected": {
        "type": "integer",
        "minimum": 2017,
        "maximum": 2030
      },
      "limit": {
        "type": "integer",
        "minimum": 1,
        "maximum": 50
      }
    },
    "required": [],
    "additionalProperties": false
  }

  latitude and longitude go together; radiusMiles needs both.

• searchOffsetProjects

  read

  Find CARB offset projects covering a point, near a point, or by id, name, operator, state, or size.

  FreshnessScheduled (source-level)
  Input schema

  {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "projectType": {
        "type": "string",
        "enum": [
          "forest",
          "livestock",
          "mineMethane",
          "ozoneDepleting"
        ]
      },
      "arbProjectId": {
        "type": "string",
        "pattern": "^CA[A-Za-z]{2}\\d{4}$",
        "description": "CARB project id such as CAFR0001."
      },
      "projectName": {
        "type": "string",
        "minLength": 3,
        "maxLength": 200
      },
      "operator": {
        "type": "string",
        "minLength": 3,
        "maxLength": 200
      },
      "stateAlpha": {
        "type": "string",
        "pattern": "^[A-Za-z]{2}$",
        "description": "Point-layer projects only; forest polygons publish no state."
      },
      "minNetCredits": {
        "type": "integer"
      },
      "minAcres": {
        "type": "integer",
        "minimum": 0,
        "description": "Forest projects only."
      },
      "latitude": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": -90,
        "maximum": 90
      },
      "longitude": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": -180,
        "maximum": 180
      },
      "radiusMiles": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": 0.1,
        "maximum": 250
      },
      "limit": {
        "type": "integer",
        "minimum": 1,
        "maximum": 200
      }
    },
    "required": [],
    "additionalProperties": false
  }

  Coordinates without radiusMiles test polygon containment only.

• getServiceInfo

  read

  Return CARB layer schemas, record counts, license terms, and what this connector does not expose.

  FreshnessScheduled (source-level)
  Input schema

  {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "service": {
        "type": "string",
        "enum": [
          "airDistricts",
          "airBasins",
          "ab617Communities",
          "ab617Districts",
          "offsetForest",
          "offsetLivestock",
          "offsetMineMethane",
          "offsetOzoneDepleting"
        ]
      }
    },
    "required": [],
    "additionalProperties": false
  }

Where this source is used

• Land research

  Parcel records, ground conditions, and what reaches the property line, for raw and rural land.

• Data center siting

  Power, water, transport, airspace, and hazard screening for a site before anyone signs anything.

• Commercial real estate

  Parcel and assessment records, building programs, and the entity on the other side of the deal.

• Residential real estate

  The parcel record, the housing programs that touch an address, and the conditions a buyer asks about.

• Real estate law

  Federal rule text, rulemaking dockets, party records, and the property facts a filing has to state.

• Realtors and brokerages

  The facts behind a listing, the programs a buyer may qualify for, and your own files in the same place.