ARR Data Hub
Gov-Public
The official portal for Australian Rainfall & Runoff design inputs — losses, temporal patterns and preburst.
Data, Monitoring & ForecastingActiveIDF CurvesDesign Storms
ERA5 / ERA5-Land
ActiveECMWF's hourly global reanalysis — the default gap-free climate forcing record for ungauged catchments worldwide.
by ECMWF / Copernicus
- Pricing
- Free
- License
- Copernicus data licence (free registration required)
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- cdsapi, Python, xarray
- Platform
- Windows, macOS, Linux
About ERA5 / ERA5-Land
ERA5 is ECMWF's fifth-generation atmospheric reanalysis: hourly, global, 0.25° (ERA5-Land refines the land surface to 0.1°), with a consistent physically-based record from 1950 to near-present across dozens of variables — precipitation, temperature, wind, radiation, soil moisture and more. It is served through the Copernicus Climate Data Store, with the cdsapi Python client as the standard access route.
For the large majority of the world's catchments that lack dense gauge networks, ERA5 is frequently the difference between "no forcing data" and a runnable model, and it has become the default reanalysis product cited in modern hydrological literature.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
Alternatives to ERA5 / ERA5-Land
Other data, monitoring & forecasting tools covering similar workflow stages.
ASCAT Soil Moisture (H SAF)
Gov-Public
Near-real-time scatterometer soil moisture from EUMETSAT — hours of latency, useful for operational monitoring.
Data, Monitoring & ForecastingActiveSatellite Soil Moisture DataStreamflow Forecasting
CHIRPS
Free
Gauge-blended satellite rainfall at 0.05°, daily, since 1981 — the standard for drainage work in data-sparse regions.
Data, Monitoring & ForecastingActiveSatellite Precipitation DataRainfall Data
Caravan
Open Source
The open global large-sample hydrology dataset — thousands of catchments with forcing, attributes and streamflow.
Data, Monitoring & ForecastingActiveStreamflow DataRainfall Data
Delft-FEWS
Free
Deltares' operational forecasting platform — the shell running national flood-forecast centres worldwide.
Data, Monitoring & ForecastingActiveStreamflow ForecastingFlood Mapping
The longest satellite soil moisture record available — merged active+passive retrievals back to 1978, free, no login.
Data, Monitoring & ForecastingActiveSatellite Soil Moisture DataDrought Analysis