Weather and climate · by Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), operated by ECMWF on behalf of the European Union

Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS)

The EU's climate data catalogue: reanalyses such as ERA5 (hourly global weather back to 1940), satellite records, seasonal forecasts and climate projections, downloadable through web forms or the cdsapi Python client with a free account.

ERA5 lets you reconstruct the weather for any hour at any spot on Earth since 1940 on a 0.25° grid, which is the backbone of much modern climate research.

LiveAPIDownloadCommercial OK

Open cds.climate.copernicus.eu ↗ agent.md

For your project

Official API: Official API · Free
“The Climate Data Store (CDS) Application Program Interface (API) is a service providing programmatic access to CDS, ADS and CEMS Early Warning DS data.” cds.climate.copernicus.eu/how-to-api
Key: Needed
“If you do not have an account yet, please register If you are not logged in, please login Once logged in, copy the code displayed below to the file $HOME/.cdsapirc” cds.climate.copernicus.eu/how-to-api
Formats: GRIB, NETCDF, JSON
Data download: Yes grib, netcdf
License: per-dataset licence; ERA5: CC BY 4.0 Each dataset carries its own licence that must be accepted on the dataset page; ERA5 single levels uses CC BY 4.0
Commercial use: Commercial use OK
“Access to data is open, free and unrestricted.” climate.copernicus.eu/climate-data-store
Credit: Credit required
“Content accessible through the CDS may only be used under the terms of the license attributed to it, as updated from time to time by the licensors.” cds.climate.copernicus.eu/disclaimer-privacy
Embedding: Embedding with conditions
“No user may publicly represent or imply that ECMWF and/or the EU are participating in, or has sponsored, approved” cds.climate.copernicus.eu/disclaimer-privacy
Using the website: Free

Read on Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS)'s own pages on Oct 23, 2026 · license or terms · API docs. Check the license page before you ship.

For your agent

A request your code or agent can make (add your key):

https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/api/catalogue/v1/collections/reanalysis-era5-single-levels

Data requests need a personal access token in ~/.cdsapirc and a one-time manual licence acceptance on each dataset page; use pip 'cdsapi>=0.7.7', copy the request from the dataset's 'Show API request code' button, and keep requests small (requests are queued). The STAC catalogue API is readable without a key.
Register, accept each dataset's licence on its page, and keep the API token out of client code.
Credit the Copernicus Climate Change Service and follow the dataset's licence (ERA5: CC BY 4.0).
Do not imply ECMWF or the EU endorse your product.

Paste into your agent: Read https://agentgid.com/resources/copernicus-climate-data-store/agent.md before using Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS).

What you can build

A 'climate of your town' report that downloads ERA5 monthly means for one grid cell and plots temperature and rainfall anomalies since 1940.
A solar or wind site-screening tool for an energy startup that pulls ERA5 hourly radiation and 100 m wind for candidate locations (credit Copernicus/ECMWF).
A training-data pipeline for a small ML weather model that fetches ERA5 pressure-level fields for one region and stores them as Zarr.

More in Weather and climate

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Open-Meteo You can pull a forecast or 80 years of hourly history for any coordinate with one plain URL and no sign-up, and the whole server is open source so you can run your own copy. LiveAPI, no keyDownloadCommercial: conditions MET Norway Weather API It is a national weather service's own production API, open to anyone worldwide without a key and licensed for commercial use, as long as your app identifies itself and caches politely. LiveAPI, no keyDownloadCommercial OK National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) The same warnings and grid forecasts that US forecasters issue are available to any program for free, and the content is public domain. LiveAPI, no keyCommercial OK NOAA NCEI Climate Data Online and Access Data Service You can pull more than a century of daily highs, lows and rainfall for a single weather station with one URL and see how a place's climate has shifted. LiveAPI, no keyDownloadCommercial: conditions ECMWF Open Data It hands out raw global output from one of the world's leading forecast centres, including its AI forecast model, under a licence that allows commercial reuse. LiveAPI, no keyDownloadCommercial OK DWD Open Data Server A whole national weather service's raw output, from global model runs to decades of daily station records, sits in open folders you can browse and script against without signing up. LiveDownloadCommercial OK

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