ECMWF Integrated Forecast System Operational (IFS Oper)

Description

The Integrated Forecast System (IFS) is ECMWF's flagship global Numerical Weather Prediction model, underpinning some of the most accurate medium-range weather forecasts available today. Run operationally four times a day, the IFS couples atmosphere, ocean, land-surface, and sea-ice components, assimilating a vast array of observations to initialise forecasts.

This open-data subset provides the deterministic high-resolution (HRES) output on a 0.25° grid, enabling rapid access to global fields for temperature, wind, precipitation, pressure, radiation, and more. Forecasts extend to 360 hours (15 days) for the main 00 UTC and 12 UTC cycles, giving users timely guidance for energy trading, aviation, agriculture, and severe-weather monitoring.

Detail

• Product page: https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data
• Key Features:
  • High-resolution 0.25° global coverage, GRIB2 with CCSDS compression.
  • 00 & 12 UTC cycles: steps 0-144 h every 3 h, 150-360 h every 6 h.
  • Released ~1 hour after real-time dissemination schedule.
  • Extensive parameter set covering surface, pressure-level, and single-level diagnostics.
• Resolution: 0.25° (~28 km) global grid.
• Temporal Coverage: Two runs per day (00/12 UTC); forecasts up to 15 days.
• Primary Use Cases: Medium-range weather prediction, renewable-energy forecasting, logistics & aviation planning, research & model validation.

Parameters: