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 under the "Licence" link in the table above. See http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/ for the content of the datasets. The other parameters are described at: http://www.ecmwf.int/publications/manuals/mars/guide/index.html
Proxies
This tool is based on the python module urllib2, and therefore use the http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables if they are set. You should set these variables in your Unix shell if your organisation runs an outgoing proxy.