This and the child documents are work in progress and don't replace yet the MARS documentation at ECMWF Web API Home or http://old.ecmwf.int/publications/manuals/mars/.
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MARS is ECMWF's Meteorological Archival and Retrieval System. This documentation describes facilities for the retrieval of data from ECMWF's operational and other archives, including the online Fields Data Base (FDB). There are a number of factors differentiating MARS from other Archive systems around the world: - Facilities to Archive and Retrieve meteorological data, enabling very easy access to the Archives via a pseudo-meteorological language
- Different requirements imposed by ECMWF's Operational and Research environments. They force MARS to be a 24 hour service with as very little down-time as possible
- Batch and interactive modes have to be supported Large amount of data, both in size and number of items stored
- Large number of users with different requirements. Some users retrieve large datasets rarely, whereas others retrieve few fields very often.
- Heterogeneous environment, involving Supercomputers, user workstations and remote systems all interconnected with a variety of network technology
- MARS holds Terabytes of data, mainly using GRIB format for Meteorological fields and BUFR format for Meteorological Observations. Most of the data produced at ECMWF daily is archived in MARS, and therefore available to users.
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This documentation starts with an overview of ECMWF's activity, as it is necessary to know the kind of data available from a meteorological archive. In section Archive content the most common products are listed, followed by details on the data formats used.
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