Accessing the batch service with Python

Installing the Python library

You can install the ecmwfapi python library by running:

sudo pip install https://software.ecmwf.int/wiki/download/attachments/23694554/ecmwf-api-python-client.tgz

If you cannot run the sudo command, just download the ecmwf-api-python-client.tgz, extract its content and copy the module ecmwfapi to a directory pointed by the environment variable PYTHONPATH.

Installing your API key

To access ECMWF you will need an  API key. For that you first need to login at https://apps.ecmwf.int/auth/login/ and then retrieve you key at https://api.ecmwf.int/v1/key/. For this, you will need to have an account on ECMWF web site. Copy the information in this page and paste it in the file $HOME/.ecmwfapirc.

{
    "url"   : "https://api.ecmwf.int/v1",
    "key"   : "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
    "email" : "john.smith@example.com"
}

Sample Python script

Below is a simple Python script making use of the ecmwfapi library:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from ecmwfapi import ECMWFDataServer

server = ECMWFDataServer()

server.retrieve({
    'dataset' : "tigge",
    'step'    : "24/to/120/by/24",
    'number'  : "all",
    'levtype' : "sl",
    'date'    : "20071001/to/20071003",
    'time'    : "00/12",
    'origin'  : "all",
    'type'    : "pf",
    'param'   : "tp",
    'area'    : "70/-130/30/-60",
    'grid'    : "2/2",
    'target'  : "data.grib"
    })

The "dataset" parameter is one of:

To access these dataset, you need to agree on the  the corresponding terms and conditions that can be found at http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/

The other parameters are described at: http://www.ecmwf.int/publications/manuals/mars/guide/index.html