Ecmwf open forecast data

[karimbahgat]

New data download functionality to get live 15-day forecast data from ECMWF Open IFS data:

ifs.hourly.download(start, end, bbox, dirname=dirname, prefix=prefix, variables=['2t', 'tp'], overwrite=True)

Downloads are saved per day, since there are many future forecasts for a single day, and the focus is on live forecasts rather than long historical archives. Historical forecast data is only available going back to 2022.

Parameter server lets user choose to download from multiple possible mirror servers, in case there are downtimes which occasionally can happen.

https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data
https://github.com/ecmwf/ecmwf-opendata

Things that remain:

• Proper documentation.
• Document valid variable names.
• Potentially support the other forecast models, especially the AI model aifs_single.
• Test folder notebook is only for exploration, move over to Climate Tools once ready.

Maps of hourly precipitation forecast steps for Sierra Leone:

Graph of daily aggregated precipitation forecasts for all of Sierra Leone (spatial mean), comparing 3 different forecast initialization days: