The Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI; ; ) is the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

agency responsible for gathering and reporting

weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloud cover, cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmo ...

data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

and forecasts in

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. It is a part of the Ministry of Transport and Communications but it operates semi-autonomously. The Institute is an impartial research and service organisation with expertise covering a wide range of

atmospheric science Atmospheric science is the study of the Atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere and its various inner-working physical processes. Meteorology includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics with a major focus on weather forecasting. Clima ...

activities other than gathering and reporting weather data and forecasts. The headquarters of the Institute is in Kumpula Campus, Helsinki, Finland.

Services

FMI provides weather forecasts for aviation, traffic, shipping and media as well as private citizens via internet and mobile devices. It also has air quality services. For sea areas, it provides information about ice cover, sea level changes and waves. In 2013 FMI made openly available data sets such as weather, sea and climate observation data, time series and model data. The

open data Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...

is targeted to benefit application developers who want to develop new services, applications and products. In 2009, researchers from VTT published a study assessing the benefits generated by the services offered by the Finnish Meteorological Institute. They concluded in sum in range of 260-290 million euros, while the annual budget of the institute was around 50 – 60 million Euros. This leads to estimate for annual benefit-cost ratio for the services to be at least 5:1.

Observations

Finnish Meteorological Institute makes observations of the atmosphere, sea and space at over 400 stations around Finland. Its weather radar network consists of 10 C-band

Doppler weather radar A weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern weather radars are mostly pu ...

Research

The research areas of FMI include

meteorology Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agricultur ...

air quality Air pollution is the presence of substances in the Atmosphere of Earth, air that are harmful to humans, other living beings or the environment. Pollutants can be Gas, gases like Ground-level ozone, ozone or nitrogen oxides or small particles li ...

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

earth observation Earth observation (EO) is the gathering of information about the physical, chemical, and biosphere, biological systems of the planet Earth. It can be performed via remote sensing, remote-sensing technologies (Earth observation satellites) or throu ...

, marine and arctic research. Scientific research at FMI is mainly organized around three centers; "Weather, Sea and Climate Service Center", "Observing and Information Service Systems Center", "Space and Earth Observation Center", and two programs; "Meteorological and Marine Research Program", "Climate Research Program". Every year FMI's researchers publish about 300 peer-reviewed articles. The institute is an active member of the

University of the Arctic The University of the Arctic (UArctic) is an international cooperative network based in the Circumpolar Arctic region, consisting of universities, colleges, and other organizations with an interest in promoting education and research in the Arcti ...

. UArctic is an international cooperative network based in the Circumpolar Arctic region, consisting of more than 200 universities, colleges, and other organizations with an interest in promoting education and research in the Arctic region.

Air quality activities

The Finnish Meteorological Institute has investigated

processes and

air pollution Air pollution is the presence of substances in the Atmosphere of Earth, air that are harmful to humans, other living beings or the environment. Pollutants can be Gas, gases like Ground-level ozone, ozone or nitrogen oxides or small particles li ...

prevention techniques since the early 1970s. Their staff members have comprehensive competence within the areas of

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

and

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

. Integrated work is done in cooperation with many other European research institutes and universities. The air quality activities conducted by the Institute include: * Research, testing and development of air quality measuring methods and equipment. * Development of

air pollutant Air pollution is the presence of substances in the air that are harmful to humans, other living beings or the environment. Pollutants can be gases like ozone or nitrogen oxides or small particles like soot and dust. It affects both outdoor ...

emission inventories. * Development of air pollution dispersion models * Performing chemical analyses of air quality. * Study and development of

prevention techniques. The suite of local-scale (0 – 30 km) dispersion models available at the Institute includes: * An urban area, multiple-source dispersion model. * Vehicular pollution line-source dispersion models. * Dispersion models for hazardous materials. * Dispersion models for odorous compounds. Dispersion models for larger scales (30 to 3000 km) are also available.

Space Research

The Finnish Meteorological Institute is one of the few places in Finland where

space research Space research is scientific study carried out in outer space, and by studying outer space. From the use of space technology to the observable universe, space research is a wide research field. Earth science, materials science, biology, medicine ...

takes place. The institute has been a part of several high-profile

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

and ESA missions, such as Phoenix,

Mars Science Laboratory Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic spacecraft, robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, which successfully landed ''Curiosity (rover), Curiosity'', a Mars rover, in Gale (crater), Gale Crater on Augus ...

Rosetta Rosetta ( ) or Rashid (, ; ) is a port city of the Nile Delta, east of Alexandria, in Egypt's Beheira governorate. The Rosetta Stone was discovered there in 1799. Founded around the 9th century on the site of the ancient town of Bolbitine, R ...

and BepiColombo, in addition to leading a lander mission of their own, MetNet. They worked with Spain and the United States to contribute to the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on Mars Science Laboratory (''Curiosity''). The Finnish Meteorological Institute has designed and produced parts to the robotic space probe

and robotic lander

Philae The Philae temple complex (; , , Egyptian: ''p3-jw-rķ' or 'pA-jw-rq''; , ) is an island-based temple complex in the reservoir of the Aswan Low Dam, downstream of the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser, Egypt. Originally, the temple complex was ...

, which sent some data from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014-2015. The electric solar wind sail, invented 2006 by FMi scientist Pekka Janhunen, got the 2010 Finnish Quality Innovation Prize among Potential innovations. It was tested in ESTCube-1 satellite.

Staff

The number of full-time staff of the Finnish Meteorological Institute is about 540. Permanent staff members account for about 2/3 of the Institute's personnel and those with contractual posts account for the remainder. The Institute operates in on a round-the-clock basis and about 30 percent of the full-time staff work in shifts. 54 percent of the staff have university degrees and 15 percent have a licentiate or PhD degree. The average age of the staff is 43 years.

References

External links

Finnish Meteorological Institute

Public GIS Map Database

Ministry of Transport and Communications Finland
{{Authority control Atmospheric dispersion modeling Governmental meteorological agencies in Europe Research institutes in Finland