ECMWF's 9km data is free and open from Tuesday 20th October

Datasets and Usage Open data
1

:tada: A milestone for open weather data!

Until now, ECMWF’s IFS products were provided at 25km resolution (0.25 degrees). From the 20th October 2026 06 UTC Forecast, the same forecasts are also published at 9 km resolution (0.1 degrees) - free, under the CC 4.0 BY licence.

What changes for you:

  • New resolution token in the file path: …/0p10/… alongside the existing 0p25 directory.
  • Separation of the surface and pressure fields for the new 9km data - index provided still to enable extractions.
  • Same mirrors: data.ecmwf.int plus AWS S3 Open Environment Data Programme, Azure, and Google Cloud.

:hourglass_not_done: We’re keeping the 25km data so you have plenty of time to move over!

Access the data here: ECMWF Free & Open Data Portal

Documents and examples can be found here: ECMWF open data: real-time forecasts from IFS and AIFS

#ECMWF #opendata #NWP #weatherdata

2

Thanks for this great news! Do you plan to support the same forecast steps as in the original IFS operational (paid) forecasts, compared to the Open Data version?

Operational (paid) forecasts:

  • 0 to 90 hours, every hour

  • 93 to 144 hours, every 3 hours

  • 150 to 360 hours, every 6 hours

Open Data forecasts (00Z and 12Z runs):

  • 0 to 144 hours, every 3 hours

  • 150 to 360 hours, every 6 hours

It would be great to have the same forecast-step resolution as the paid operational data.

3

Hi,
please see the following announcement: Free and Open data issue: IFS 22 October 2026 00 UTC forecast, steps 288 to 360

Thanks