ERA5 reanalysis data

Documentation of the ERA5 archive at GFI

GFI is building up an archive of ERA5 reanalysis data on the local linux system cyclone.hpc.uib.no. ERA5 supersedes the ERA-Interim reanalysis data, which ended in August 2019. More information about the ERA5 reanalysis data set is available at ECMWF's ERA5 websites.

The ERA5 data files are available in netCDF format at

/Data/gfi/share/era5

At GFI, we share the data format with the IAC at ETH Zürich, Switzerland; the LSD group at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany; and the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. The data are organised as follows

ml/        3-hourly data on a regular 0.5 deg latitude-longitude grid
pl/         pressure level data at different resolutions (not yet retrieved)

Data files are contained in subdirectories for each year and month:

ml/YYYY/MM/[B|H|P|Z]YYYYMMDD_HH

Until now, the years 1999-2018 have been retrieved, the period will successively be extended back to 1979.

The data files contain the following variables:

ERA5 data files
File name	"P<yyyy><mm> _< hh>"		"Z<yyyy><mm> _< hh>"	"H<yyyy><mm> _< hh>"	"B<yyyy><mm> _< hh>"
Leveltype	Model level	Surface	Pressure	Pressure	Surface
Variables	T, Q, U, V, OMEGA, LWC, IWC, RWC, SWC	LSP, CP, SF, SSHF, SLHF, BLH, TCC, U10M, V10M, MSL, PS, SSTK	Z, T, Q, U, V	Z	PS, MSL, TCC, U10M, V10M, SSTK, CI, D2M, T2M, TCW, TCWV, VIWVD, E, MN2T, MX2T, SI, TTR, TTRC, WG10, LSP, CP, SF, SSHF, SLHF, BLH
Levels	40-137	-	900, 850, 800, 700, 600, 500, 400, 300, 250, 200, 100 hPa	1000, 975, 950, 925, 900, 875, 850, 825, 800, 775, 750, 700, 650, 600, 550, 500, 450, 400, 350, 300, 250, 225, 200, 175, 150, 125, 100, 70, 50, 30, 20, 10, 70, 5, 3, 2, 1 hPa	-
Times available	00, 03, 06, 09, 12, 15, 18, 21 UTC

Note that the variables LSP, CP, SF, SSHF, SLHF, and BLH are derived as prognostic variables from the short-range forecast. Data valid at 00, 03, 06, 09 UTC are 06, 09, 12, 15 h forecast of the 18 UTC forecast of the previous day. Accordingly, data valid at 12, 15, 18, 21 UTC are 06, 09, 12, 15 h forecast of the 06 UTC forecast. The prognostic variables are accumulated over the previous 1 h.

Please see ECMWF ERA5 data documentation for parameter abbreviations.

Conditions of use: When using the ERA5 data from this archive please make sure to reference „Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) (2017): ERA5: Fifth generation of ECMWF atmospheric reanalyses of the global climate. Copernicus Climate Change Service Climate Data Store (CDS), date of citation. https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home“ and acknowledge „ECMWF for providing ERA-5 data“. Also, please acknowledge Michael Sprenger (ETH Zurich)“ for the support in providing the data.