For the time being and until further notice, ERA-Interim (1st January 1979 to 31st August 2019) shall continue to be accessible through the ECMWF Web API. Keeping in mind that ERA-Interim is published with an offset of about three months from the dataset's reference date, ERA-Interim August 2019 data will be made available towards the end of October 2019.

ERA5 is now available from the Climate Data Store (CDS) (What are the changes from ERA-Interim to ERA5?) and users are strongly advised to migrate to ERA5 (How to migrate from ECMWF Web API to CDS API).

Please see the respective links for guidance and workarounds.


  1. Surface photosynthetically active radiation (surface PAR) values are too low

  2. Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) values are erroneously zero
  3. ERA-Interim issues with cloud cover
  4. Sea Surface Temperature has values over land in ERA-Interim and other ERA products
  5. Anomalies at certain dates and locations
  6. Over oceans geopotential (and potentially derived fields too) shows a 'spectral ripples' pattern.
  7. It is not possible to obtain full (archived) resolution ERA-Interim data from the point and click web interface. Instead you get:
    1. For spectral data, when grid=128 is selected, automatic truncation to T213 occurs.
    2. The option "Grid default (as archived)" gives a 0.75x0.75 lat/long grid for both spectral and grid point data, again with automatic truncation to T213 for spectral fields.
    3. The Gaussian grids all appear to be full grids, not reduced, with no means of requesting the latter.
    4. There is no T255 option
      (Link to source - internal only)
  8. Sunshine duration is defined in a non-standard manner which leads to underestimation of this quantity.



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