CONTENT UNDER DEVELOPMENT AS PART OF THE ECMWF USER DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Essential information on how to access ECMWF forecast and archive data, as well as forecast charts, and other datasets.
If you are just beginning to explore the products available from ECMWF, the costs and what licence you might need, please start from our forecast charts and data pages.
Access to ECMWF products - forecast charts, forecast data and archive data
National meteorological services of ECMWF Member and Co-operating States are granted full access to ECMWF products. For other people, the type of customer you are (member of public, commercial, etc. ) and what you want to do with ECMWF products (provide a service, do research) governs the products that you can access, the licence you need and the cost.
Find more information on access to ECMWF products.
ECMWF free products
ECMWF free forecast charts. ECMWF free data (public data and WMO Essential data).
Free data are also available through the Copernicus Climate Change and Atmosphere Monitoring Services:
If you want to explore the open and free of charge (see Copernicus Licence for details) data of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) please have a look here:
If you want to explore the open and free of charge (see Copernicus Licence for details) data of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) please have a look here:
For details on datasets and questions please have a look at the Copernicus knowledge base and Copernicus User Support Forum Home.
While the above products are free, you still need to check the licence for their use - you should find licence details with the products themselves. (Is this okay?)
Find out how to get ECMWF products
- real-time forecast charts
- real-time forecast data
- see our real-time forecast data
- real-time forecast data - documentation on how to access
- archive (historical data)
- see our archive data
- archive data - documentation on how to access
What do the terms real-time and archive mean?
Real-time forecast data, or 'valid' data, is all meteorological information in the form of pictures, charts, text or data files for which the verification time is in the future or less than 24 hours ago. This means that it can be used to predict the weather conditions.
Real-time data are also referred to as valid data.
Expired real-time data are any data with a verification time ‘more than 24 hours in the past’ (i.e. data which cannot be used to forecast).
Archive (also referred to as historical) data refer to past data and include:
- expired real-time data
- reanalysis data
- data from specific experiments or observational campaigns
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