Getting weather and climate data from ECMWF: a guide for journalists and media producers
ECMWF publishes a large, growing catalogue of free and open forecast and reanalysis data covering global weather, climate, atmospheric composition, floods, fires, and more.
ECMWF also implements the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service on behalf of the European Commission and is contributing to information on flooding and fire danger for the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, with relevant data in the Climate Data Store and Atmosphere Data Store.
Most media enquiries can be answered directly from these resources – often with a ready-made chart, notebook or dataset.
What are you trying to do?
- You want a country-specific forecast, warning, or interpretation
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Contact the relevant national meteorological and hydrological service (NMHS) of that country. Our Member and Co-operating States hold the mandate and the local expertise for national forecast communication. A list of NMHSs is maintained by the WMO.
- You want a chart or headline figure
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Charts catalogue and Open Data. Most charts have an accompanying Jupyter notebook showing how the data was obtained and plotted. This can be reused and adapted to your own colouring and media requirements.
- You want to reproduce a past event (e.g. heatwave, storm, flood)
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The Climate Data Store (ERA5), Atmosphere Data Store, and Open Data archive cover most retrospective needs.
- You have a bespoke, recurring data need that free routes can't meet
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You can create a quote in the Product Requirements Catalogue (PRC) or review the access methods for Service Providers.
What ECMWF provides for free
- Open Data – real-time HRES and ENS forecast fields, downloadable directly.
- Charts catalogue – global and regional forecast charts, updated operationally. Most charts include a "How to reproduce this chart" notebook linking to the underlying data.
- Climate Data Store (CDS) – ERA5 reanalysis, seasonal forecasts, climate projections and climate indicators, and dozens of derived datasets. This has a free API and web access.
- Atmosphere Data Store (ADS) – CAMS atmospheric composition, air quality, wildfire emissions, dust, UV, and ozone concentrations.
- Copernicus Data Store Applications – interactive applications that bring Copernicus data to life.
- Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring charts – air quality forecast plots and global forecast plots.
- AIFS and machine-learning forecasts – outputs from ECMWF's operational ML forecasting systems.
Where ECMWF is not the right point of contact
- Country-specific forecast events. ECMWF produces global model output, while interpretation for a specific country such as nowcasts, national warnings, likely impacts and local terminology sit with the national meteorological and hydrological service (NMHS) of that country. Their forecasters have the mandate, the local context, and dedicated media desks. A list of NMHSs is maintained by the WMO.
- Ad-hoc data retrievals. We regret that we are unable to provide bespoke one-off retrievals.
Attribution and licensing
- ECMWF Open Data and Copernicus data are free to use for any purpose, including commercial, under their published licences (CC-BY-4.0).
- Please credit the source clearly, e.g. "Data: ECMWF", "Data: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF", or "Chart: ECMWF".
Further support and questions
- Data access questions: please use the ECMWF Support Portal for all technical data questions.