API Request failing with "Your request is too large"

Software and Tools API
1

Hi, I am trying to download ERA5-Land data using the cdsapi but get this error:

03 Client Error: Forbidden for url: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/api/retrieve/v1/processes/reanalysis-era5-land/execution
cost limits exceeded
Your request is too large, please reduce your selection.

My request includes 5 variables, 1 year, 12 months, 31 days, 12 hours and a single grid point (I am using a very small bounding box to ensure only one grid point is retrieved; ‘area’: [42.29, 24.7, 42.2, 24.79]). The format is grib, unarchived.

Is it normal for the API to fail downloading such a small dataset (a table with 8760 rows and 6 columns if we count “valid_time”)? I think the limit is 10 GB. Am I doing something wrong?

Here is my code:

client = cdsapi.Client()

dataset = ‘reanalysis-era5-land’
request = {
‘variable’: [“2m_dewpoint_temperature”,
“2m_temperature”,
“surface_solar_radiation_downwards”,
“10m_u_component_of_wind”,
“10m_v_component_of_wind”],
‘year’: [‘2025’],
‘month’: [‘01’, ‘02’, ‘03’,
‘04’, ‘05’, ‘06’,
‘07’, ‘08’, ‘09’,
‘10’, ‘11’, ‘12’],
‘day’: [‘01’, ‘02’, ‘03’,
‘04’, ‘05’, ‘06’,
‘07’, ‘08’, ‘09’,
‘10’, ‘11’, ‘12’,
‘13’, ‘14’, ‘15’,
‘16’, ‘17’, ‘18’,
‘19’, ‘20’, ‘21’,
‘22’, ‘23’, ‘24’,
‘25’, ‘26’, ‘27’,
‘28’, ‘29’, ‘30’,
‘31’],
‘time’: [‘00:00’, ‘01:00’, ‘02:00’,
‘03:00’, ‘04:00’, ‘05:00’,
‘06:00’, ‘07:00’, ‘08:00’,
‘09:00’, ‘10:00’, ‘11:00’,
‘12:00’, ‘13:00’, ‘14:00’,
‘15:00’, ‘16:00’, ‘17:00’,
‘18:00’, ‘19:00’, ‘20:00’,
‘21:00’, ‘22:00’, ‘23:00’],
‘data_format’: ‘grib’,
“download_format”: “unarchived”,
‘area’: [42.29, 24.7, 42.2, 24.79]
}
target = ‘download2025.grib’

client.retrieve(dataset, request, target)

2

See the download web page ERA5-Land hourly data from 1950 to present

Only one year/month is selectable.

For ERA5 “Select all” is an option, but for some reason not for ERA5-Land

I doubt that helps much :slight_smile:

3

Dear Mark_Elliott1, thank you for your response. For other who may be interested in this topic I found this post in the forum explaining the limits for data download. I used the code linked in this post to download data month by month using a for loop. I had to combine the files after that, but it is better than nothing.