ECMWF ERA-15: Surface Orography Data

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has provided global atmospheric analyses from its archive for many years. The ERA-15 Re-analysis project was devised in response to wishes expressed by many users for a data set generated by a modern, consistent, and invariant data assimilation system. The ERA-15 project produced a long time-series (January 1979 - February 1994) of consistent meteorological analyses using a single version of the ECMWF model.

This dataset contains surface orography data. These data are available in gaussian N80 gridded, lat-long (2.5 degree) gridded and spectral form, from the initialised and uninitialised datasets (N.B. initialised spectral is missing at the moment).

Note that the grid-point orography files change with date. This does not affect the ERA period but if you use Operational data for later dates you will need

to use the different orography files from our ecmwf-op directory.

The spectral orography file spor90010100 contains just the orography data (surface geopotential).

The other files contain the constant fields:

Geopotential (at the surface, orography)

Standard deviation of orography

Anisotropy of subgrid scale orography

Angle of subgrid scale orography

Slope of subgrid scale orography

Land/Sea mask

gpor79010100 contains the gaussian gridded data

llor80010100 contains the 2.5 degree gridded data

Date (Publication): 2006-12-10T11:28:21

Date (Creation): 2006-12-10T11:28:21

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/0872cfcf994b4c6292e19f69fb0e7541

Citation identifier: NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / 0872cfcf994b4c6292e19f69fb0e7541

Point of contact

Organisation name	Electronic mail address	Role
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)	unknown	Author
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	Custodian
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	Distributor
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)	unknown	Principal investigator
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	pointofContact
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Not planned

Update scope: Dataset

Keywords

ECMWF
ERA
ERA 15
reanalysis
surface
orography

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Access to these data is available to any registered CEDA user. Please Login or Register for a CEDA account to gain access.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Under the following licence https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/specific_licences/ecmwf-era-products.pdf, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

Topic category

Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date: 1979-01-01T00:00:00

End date: 1994-02-28T00:00:00

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Data are GRIB 1 formatted.

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/0872cfcf994b4c6292e19f69fb0e7541	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ecmwf-era/data/orography	DOWNLOAD

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://zenodo.org/record/7356547	Encoding and decoding GRIB data (GRIBEX)

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Statement: Data were extracted from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) MARS system and transferred to BADC where they were ingested into the archive.

Metadata

File identifier: 0872cfcf994b4c6292e19f69fb0e7541 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Parent identifier: European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 15-year re-analysis (ERA-15) model data
73ec447ea99457c77c0ef9692f76393f

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Date stamp: 2026-03-09T03:11:20

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Point of contact

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