Introduction to ERA-40 Archive at NCAR

Introduction

The ERA40 project is a global atmospheric analysis of many conventional observations and satellite data streams for the period September, 1957 - August, 2002. Analyses were produced daily at 00Z, 06Z, 12Z and 18Z. The atmospheric model was run with the following resolution:

60 levels in the vertical;
T159 spherical-harmonic representation for basic dynamic fields;
a reduced Gaussian grid with approximately uniform 125km spacing for surface and other grid-point fields.

Detailed descriptions of the project and the data assimilation system are available in The ERA-40 Project Report Series and ERA-40 Archive Plan documents from ECMWF.

The ERA-40 global atmospheric reanalysis has been provided by ECMWF and is distributed by the Computational Information and Systems Laboratory (CISL) at NCAR. This is the primary distribution point in the U.S. and is a complete archive from the ERA-40 Project.

Our agreement with ECMWF allows us to provide these data for non-commercial research in the U.S. and to some Canadian institutions. Users are required to sign a permission form before access is granted to the data.