Reference

Information on how to access the data via REST API can be found in the APIs section. Here, we'll provide a bit more information on the dataset and a simple example using the popular Pandas library in Python.

Our primary data source is ERA5 reanalysis dataset, available from 1980 to about 10 days into the past. Recent past (< 10 days) and forecast data uses GFS analysis and forecast dataset. These are public dataset and can be downloaded directly by the users but as the original data is stored in spatial format, extracting time-series can be an extremely slow process.

OikoLab has processed hundreds of terabytes of data to give you access this data in seconds rather than hours or even days, whether you require 3 months or 30 years of historical data.

What is reanalysis?

Climate reanalyses combine vast observations from satellites, aircraft, land and sea based weather sensors with atmospheric models to generate consistent time series of multiple climate variables. ERA5 is the latest climate reanalysis produced by ECMWF, providing hourly data on many atmospheric, land-surface and sea-state parameters, on regular latitude-longitude grids at 0.25o x 0.25o resolution. 

Python Example

Using the API, getting time-series data for a given location and creating a Pandas DataFrame is extremely simple.

FAQ

How does ERA5 reanalysis data compare with MERRA-2?

  • ERA5 has about 4 times the spatial resolution when compared with MERRA-2 (0.25 x 0.25 vs. 0.5 x 0.625).

Do you have ERA5-land data?

  • Coming soon! We will be adding the first batch of ERA5-land dataset (9km resolution) at the end of the summer.

How do I create an AMY EPW file for EnergyPlus?

  • We suggest downloading the parameters and using scripting tools such as Ladybug to generate EPW files.

Don't see the parameters you need?