ERA5 hourly data on pressure levels

This dataset is a curated subset of pressure levels quantities derived from ECMWF’s ERA5 hourly data on pressure levels.

Built upon the Climate Data Store (CDS) version of ERA5, this dataset is distributed as a Zarr archive. It is designed to offer a fast, highly accessible alternative for querying ERA5 pressure levels global reanalysis data. The current subset only includes pressure levels 1000, 925, 850, 700, 600, 500, 400, 300, 250, 200, 150, 100, 70, 50, 30, 20, 10, 5, 1 [hPa].

📊 Chunking Specifications

To optimize data access performance for regional and time-series analyses, the dataset employs a spatio-temporal chunking scheme of 60 days × 15° latitude × 15° longitude. This corresponds to an array chunk shape of 1440 (valid_time) × 60 (latitude) × 60 (longitude).

⚠️ Changelog

This dataset moved to Zarr v3 in July 2026 and needs zarr-python 3 or newer. The previous Zarr v2 version is no longer updated: please switch using the migration guide.

How to download the data

This Python snippet includes the token directly in the URL.

1import xarray as xr
2
3xr.open_dataset(
4    # Replace <your API key> with your actual key
5    "https://edh:<your API key>@data.earthdatahub.destine.eu/era5/era5-pressure-levels-v0.zarr",
6    chunks={},
7    engine="zarr",
8)

Variables

Short NameUnitsDescription
cc
(0 - 1)

Fraction of cloud cover

ciwc
kg kg-1

Specific cloud ice water content

clwc
kg kg-1

Specific cloud liquid water content

crwc
kg kg-1

Specific rain water content

cswc
kg kg-1

Specific snow water content

d
s-1

Divergence

o3
kg kg-1

Ozone mass mixing ratio

pv
K m2 kg-1 s-1

Potential vorticity

q
kg kg-1

Specific humidity

r
%

Relative humidity

t
K

Temperature

u
m s-1

U component of wind

v
m s-1

V component of wind

vo
s-1

Vorticity (relative)

w
Pa s-1

Vertical velocity

z
m2 s-2

Geopotential

DestinE platform