CEDA Archive Support for ERA5 use

The CEDA user communirt have made great use of ECMWF’s ERA Interim reanalyis data over recent years, taking advantage of having co-hosted access to these and other data from the CEDA archives alongside their own resources within the JASMIN environment. ECMWF are presently producing their latest re-analysis product, ERA5, which promises even greater spatial and temporal resolutions as well as new parameters. However, with improved resolution comes greater data volumes, with ERA5 forecast to produce around 10 Pb worth of data by the end of 2018.

Though there is strong demand for some ERA5 data to be held by CEDA to support regular use of these data by multiple users, the complete dataset is well beyond our capacity, but CEDA are seeking to support our users’ needs where possible. 

CEDA has capacity to copy around 2Pb of ECMWF data onto JASMIN disks, with options to have more on tape, through which support will look to supply data in four categories:

1. Low volume, general interest data (E.g. monthly mean surface fields): these will be copied in full, high resolution and ensemble products;
2. Medium volume (e.g. hourly surface fields): a selection of variables will be copied, for the full time series;
3. High volume (e.g. hourly model level fields): only data which is specifically requested will be copied, and only for specified time periods;
4. Support for replication of ERA5t data onto a Group Work Space into a rolling archive – we don’t expect to archive this data permanently, as they will be superceded by ERA5.

Details are not fixed, and we will adjust our plans to take into account user requests. More details can be seen in the following document: CEDA support for ERA5 and other ECMWF product 

We welcome feedback from our user community as we continue to refine our plans for ERA5 provision. To do so, please get in touch with us via [support@ceda.ac.uk](mailto:support@ceda.ac.uk?subject=CEDA data provision for ERA5 users “Email CEDA your thoughts about our ERA5 data provision plan”)

CEDA Team