Data Sources

flexprep supports multiple input data sources for obtaining ECMWF IFS data. Each source provides the same type of dataset suitable for the preprocessing step.

Available Sources

Source	Module	Description	Access Requirements
Local	flexprep.sources.local	Reads existing GRIB files from a local directory. Ideal for offline use or testing.	No restrictions.
MARS	flexprep.sources.mars	Downloads IFS HRES data directly from the ECMWF MARS archive.	Requires ECMWF membership and valid MARS access rights. See ECMWF: Access to MARS.
Polytope	flexprep.sources.polytope	Retrieves IFS data using earthkit-data’s Polytope source. Core model-level variables (winds, temperature, etadot) are fetched from the swiss-meteo collection, while all other model-level, surface, and constant fields are retrieved from the ECMWF ecmwf-mars collection.	Access is restricted to ECMWF member states. Access to the swiss-meteo collection must be authorized by ECMWF. To request access, contact nina.burgdorfer@meteoswiss.ch.

Note

Developer note: Figure out how to use Polytope feature extraction with the Polytope source data.

Documentation: https://polytope.readthedocs.io/en/latest/