ERA5 ==== Global atmospheric reanalysis produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), providing high-resolution meteorological fields for weather, climate, and hazard-related applications. ---- Overview -------- **ERA5** is the fifth-generation global reanalysis developed by ECMWF under the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). It combines vast amounts of historical observations with a modern data assimilation system to generate temporally consistent, high-resolution estimates of the atmospheric state. ERA5 is widely adopted as a standard meteorological baseline for climate studies and natural hazard modeling, including wildfire danger assessment, flood risk analysis, and extreme weather attribution. ---- Data Characteristics -------------------- - **Spatial coverage:** Global - **Spatial resolution:** ~0.25° latitude × 0.25° longitude - **Temporal resolution:** Hourly - **Vertical structure:** Single-level fields and optional pressure/model levels - **Data format:** GRIB and NetCDF - **Coordinate system:** Regular latitude–longitude grid ---- Variables --------- ERA5 provides a comprehensive set of atmospheric and surface variables, including: - Near-surface meteorology (2 m temperature, dewpoint, wind) - Precipitation, radiation, and surface fluxes - Atmospheric pressure-level variables (temperature, winds, geopotential) - Boundary-layer and land-surface diagnostics ---- Typical Use Cases ----------------- - Meteorological forcing for wildfire, flood, and extreme weather prediction models - Climate variability and trend analysis - Environmental covariates for spatiotemporal machine learning tasks - Benchmark reanalysis input for weather–climate modeling pipelines ---- Access ------ ERA5 data are distributed via the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS): - `ERA5 single levels `_ - `Copernicus Climate Data Store `_ ---- Reference --------- Hersbach, H., Bell, B., Berrisford, P., *et al.* (2020). *The ERA5 global reanalysis*. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 146(730), 1999–2049. `https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3803 `_