ERA5: Global Climate Reanalysis Data, Cloud-Optimized

ERA5 global atmospheric reanalysis data is produced using high-resolution forecasts at 31 km resolution and a 62 km resolution ensemble. The dataset is a cloud-optimized reformat of the NSF NCAR Curated ERA5 dataset, restructured into Zarr format with Icechunk indexing for scalable access. It is managed by Earthmover and hosted on AWS Open Data.

Use Cases

• Train machine learning models for weather prediction based on global atmospheric and surface parameters.
• Conduct climate trend analysis based on hourly frequency data spanning multiple decades.
• Perform renewable energy site assessments based on surface parameters like radiation fluxes and 2-meter temperature.
• Analyze atmospheric dynamics based on data interpolated to 37 pressure levels.

Strengths

• Data is provided in a cloud-optimized Zarr format with Icechunk indexing, enabling efficient, chunked access without full file downloads.
• Atmospheric data is interpolated to 37 pressure levels and includes surface and single-level parameters.
• The underlying ERA5 reanalysis uses high-resolution forecasts (HRES) at 31 km resolution.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NSF NCAR Curated ECMWF Reanalysis 5 (ERA5), reformatted by Earthmover.

Collection Method

Produced using ECMWF's Integrated Forecast System (IFS) CY41r2 with data assimilation.

Geography

Global