Download ERA5 reanalysis data for a variable and time range using the Copernicus Climate Data Store API
domain: cds.climate.copernicus.eu · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Register/log in to the CDS, accept the relevant dataset license, and save the URL and personal access token to the local .cdsapirc configuration file.
Install the cdsapi Python package and instantiate a client that reads the .cdsapirc credentials automatically.
Submit a retrieval request specifying the dataset (e.g. reanalysis-era5-single-levels), variable(s), year/month/day/time, and area/grid subsetting.
Poll or await the asynchronous job, then download the resulting NetCDF/GRIB file once the request completes.
Note a newer ecmwf-datastores-client package with sync/async REST support exists, but the legacy cdsapi package remains supported and migration is not yet mandatory.
Known gotchas
Retrieval requests are queued and can take anywhere from seconds to hours depending on CDS load and request size — design for asynchronous polling, not an immediate response.
You must explicitly accept each dataset's license terms in the CDS web UI before API requests for that dataset will succeed.
Large area/full-resolution/global requests can produce very large files; subset by area and reduce grid resolution to keep downloads manageable.
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