ECMWF allows Pre-Schedule Delivery for Member States, Co-operating States and users with specific service packages.  To request the addition of this feature, please raise a ticket in the ECMWF Support Portal and mark it for the attention of the Data Support Team. 

What is Pre-Schedule Delivery?

ECMWF delivers files according to the dissemination schedule, in the standard delivery mode, even when files are produced earlier and already available in the ECPDS interface, they remain queued until their scheduled release time.

With the pre-schedule option, files are sent as soon as they have been created and made available for all users in the ECPDS interface, rather than being held until their scheduled release time. This means all pre-schedule users receive a given file at the same time, whenever it becomes ready. File creation times vary from day to day, so the gaps between consecutive steps may be larger or smaller than usual. Typical lead times per model and cycle are shown in the table below.

Pre-schedule delivery is available to Member States, Co-operating States, Gold Service Pack Service Agreement holders, and Silver Service Pack Service Agreement holders (see Service Charges: From 01 July 2024). Research users are not eligible.

Datasets eligible for Pre-Schedule Delivery

  • IFS High Resolution Data Assimilation (class=od, stream=oper/wave)
  • IFS Medium-range Control Forecast (class=od, stream=oper/wave)
  • IFS Medium-range Ensemble Forecast (class=od, stream=enfo/waef)
  • IFS Sub-seasonal Forecast (class=od, stream=eefo/weef)
  • AIFS Single Forecast (class=ai, stream=oper/wave)
  • AIFS Ensemble Forecast (class=ai, stream=enfo/waef)
  • CAMS Atmospheric Composition Forecast (class=mc, stream=oper)
  • CAMS Atmospheric Composition Data Assimilation (class=mc, stream=oper)
  • Where feeds contain a mixture of datasets, those that are not eligible will not be delivered ahead of the schedule.
  • Seasonal forecast and reforecast (hindcast) data are not eligible.
  • Available for both push and pull ECPDS destinations.
  • Products derived from several forecast steps or ensemble members can only be sent once all their input fields exist.

Support for Pre-Schedule Delivery 

There are a number of risks to be aware of when using the pre-schedule delivery option: 

  1. There is a higher risk that files may need to be re-generated. If issues are discovered during the generation process before the scheduled delivery, you may initially receive corrupted or incomplete files. Corrected versions will be sent after the scheduled time, which increases the risk of processing files that will later need to be replaced.
  2. Files may arrive non-consecutively:  on occasion the steps may arrive out of order (for example: step 4 may arrive before step 3). Your processing chain should be able to handle this and we will not be able to force consecutive files for pre-schedule delivery. 
  3. In the event of delayed production, files will not be sent before the schedule 
  4. File priorities can interfere with the delivery: the default priorities of files can interfere with the delivery order, particularly for hourly steps of the 00/12 UTC runs. If your hourly steps have priority=70, these might be delivered after the enfo data streams, which have a default priority of 40. Lower priority values are delivered first. Priorities can be set in the Product Requirements Editor by using priority keyword. 
  • Users will be notified of operational issues as per the current arrangement.
  • Users with pre-schedule delivery should not raise a ticket until at least 15 minutes after the scheduled dissemination time of the affected product, and where no operational issue has already been reported.
  • Before reporting issues, we encourage users to check the status of files in ECPDS and also the ECMWF Service Status. 
  • Please note that support will not be provided for variability in file arrival times, but users should continue to report perceived traffic slowdowns.
  • 24/7 support will not include changing the status of feeds from normal to pre-schedule. This will be enabled during office hours Monday-Thursday by Data Support team. 

Enabling Pre-Schedule Delivery

Users can request pre-schedule delivery in the Product Requirements Editor. 

Feed options include DELAY, NORMAL and PRE-SCHEDULE. 

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Create a support ticket in our Support portal

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Please note that support for this service option is provided only from 15 minutes after the scheduled dissemination time of the affected product.


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Typical pre-schedule lead time

Median over the last 10 days of how many minutes before the dissemination schedule each run's first data starts transferring to users, a positive value means data arrives that many minutes early. Each cell also shows the step-0 scheduled release time (sched) and the typical earliest arrival. A dash (-) means the run doesn't run at that cycle.

Full Name (Model Name)
class:stream:type		00z06z12z18z
IFS High Resolution Data Assimilation (ifs-da)
od:oper:an		22 min
sched 05:40z → arrives 05:18z		25 min
sched 11:40z → arrives 11:15z		22 min
sched 17:40z → arrives 17:18z		25 min
sched 23:40z → arrives 23:15z
IFS Medium-range Control Forecast (ifs-ens-cf)
od:oper:fc		17 min
sched 05:45z → arrives 05:28z		19 min
sched 11:45z → arrives 11:26z		16 min
sched 17:45z → arrives 17:29z		22 min
sched 23:45z → arrives 23:23z
IFS Medium-range Ensemble Forecast (ifs-ens)
od:enfo:pf		40 min
sched 06:40z → arrives 06:00z		48 min
sched 12:40z → arrives 11:52z		43 min
sched 18:40z → arrives 17:57z		49 min
sched 00:40z → arrives 23:51z
IFS Sub-seasonal Forecast (ifs-subs)
od:eefo:cf		7h 52m
sched 20:00z → arrives 12:08z		---
AIFS Single Forecast (aifs-single)
ai:oper:fc		18 min
sched 05:45z → arrives 05:27z		63 min
sched 12:27z → arrives 11:24z		18 min
sched 17:45z → arrives 17:27z		63 min
sched 00:27z → arrives 23:24z
AIFS Ensemble Forecast (aifs-ens)
ai:enfo:cf		45 min
sched 06:40z → arrives 05:55z		50 min
sched 12:40z → arrives 11:50z		49 min
sched 18:40z → arrives 17:51z		51 min
sched 00:40z → arrives 23:49z
CAMS Atmospheric Composition Data Assimilation (ifs-compo-da)
mc:oper:an		58 min
sched 10:00z → arrives 09:02z		-60 min
sched 22:00z → arrives 21:00z		-
CAMS Atmospheric Composition Forecast (ifs-compo)
mc:oper:fc		58 min
sched 10:00z → arrives 09:02z		-61 min
sched 22:00z → arrives 20:59z		-

Generated 2026-11-02 08:02 UTC. Updated weekly.

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