, nativename_a = , nativename_r = , logo = , logo_width = , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = FS IMG 8907 KNMI.jpg , picture_width = 250px , picture_caption = KNMI headquarters in

De Bilt De Bilt () is a municipality and town in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands. It had a population of in . De Bilt houses the headquarters of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). It is the ancestral home and namesake for the pro ...

, formed = , preceding1 = , preceding2 = , dissolved = , superseding = , jurisdiction = , headquarters =

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, coordinates = , motto = , employees = , budget = , prime_minister_name = , minister1_name = , minister1_pfo = , minister2_name = , minister2_pfo = , deputyminister1_name = Steven van Weyenberg , deputyminister1_pfo = , deputyminister2_name = , deputyminister2_pfo = , chief1_name = , chief1_position = , chief2_name = , chief2_position = , chief3_name = , chief3_position = , chief4_name = , chief4_position = , chief5_name = , chief5_position = , chief6_name = , director_general = , agency_type = , chief6_position = , chief7_name = , chief7_position = , chief8_name = , chief8_position = , chief9_name = , chief9_position = , parent_department =

Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management , type = Department , logo = Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat Logo.png , logo_width = 250x250px , logo_alt = Logo of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management , image = Rijksgeb ...

, parent_agency = , child1_agency = , child2_agency = , keydocument1 = , website = , footnotes = , map = , map_width = , map_caption = The Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute ( nl, Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut, ; KNMI) is the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

national

weather forecasting Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th cent ...

service, which has its headquarters in

, in the

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

, central

. The primary tasks of KNMI are weather forecasting, monitoring of climate changes and monitoring seismic activity. KNMI is also the national research and information centre for

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

and

seismology Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...

History

Christophorus Henricus Diedericus Buys-Ballot

KNMI was established by royal decree of

King William III William III (William Henry; ; 4 November 16508 March 1702), also widely known as William of Orange, was the sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from the ...

on 21 January 1854 under the title "Royal Meteorological Observatory". Professor

C. H. D. Buys Ballot Christophorus Henricus Diedericus Buys Ballot (; October 10, 1817 – February 3, 1890) was a Dutch chemist and meteorologist after whom Buys Ballot's law and the Buys Ballot table are named. He was first chairman of the International Meteo ...

was appointed as the first Director. The year before Professor Ballot had moved the Utrecht University Observatory to the decommissioned fort at Sonnenborgh. It was only later, in 1897, that the headquarters of the KNMI moved to the Koelenberg estate in

. The "Royal Meteorological Observatory" originally had two divisions, the land branch under Dr. Frederik Wilhelm Christiaan Krecke and the marine branch under navy Lt. Marin H. Jansen. Like

Robert FitzRoy Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy (5 July 1805 – 30 April 1865) was an English officer of the Royal Navy and a scientist. He achieved lasting fame as the captain of during Charles Darwin's famous voyage, FitzRoy's second expedition to Tierra de ...

who founded the

Meteorological Office The Meteorological Office, abbreviated as the Met Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and is led by CEO Penelope ...

in Britain the same year, Ballot was disenchanted with the non-scientific weather reports found in European newspapers at the time. Like the Met Office, the KNMI also pioneered daily weather predictions, which he called by a new combination "weervoorspelling" (weather prognostication).

Research at KNMI

Applied research at KNMI is focused on three areas: * Research aimed at improving the quality, usefulness and accessibility of meteorological and oceanographical data in support of operational weather forecasting and other applications of such data. * Climate-related research on oceanography; atmospheric boundary layer processes, clouds and radiation; the chemical composition of the atmosphere (e.g. ozone); climate variability research; the analysis of climate, climate variability and climatic change; modelling support and policy support to the Dutch Government with respect to climate and climatic change. * Seismological research as well as monitoring of seismic activity (

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...

s).

KNMI's development of atmospheric dispersion models

KNMI's applied research also encompasses the development and operational use of atmospheric dispersion models. Whenever a disaster occurs within

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

which causes the emission of

toxic Toxicity is the degree to which a chemical substance or a particular mixture of substances can damage an organism. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a subs ...

gases or

radioactive material A radionuclide (radioactive nuclide, radioisotope or radioactive isotope) is a nuclide that has excess nuclear energy, making it unstable. This excess energy can be used in one of three ways: emitted from the nucleus as gamma radiation; transfe ...

into the atmosphere, it is of utmost importance to quickly determine where the atmospheric plume of toxic material is being transported by the prevailing winds and other meteorological factors. At such times, KNMI activates a special calamity service. For this purpose, a group of seven meteorologists is constantly on call day or night. KNMI's role in supplying information during emergencies is included in municipal and provincial disaster management plans. Civil services, fire departments and the police can be provided with weather and other relevant information directly by the meteorologist on duty, through dedicated telephone connections. KNMI has available two atmospheric dispersion models for use by their calamity service: * PUFF - In cooperation with the

Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment ( nl, Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu or simply RIVM) is a Dutch research institute that is an independent agency of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. RIVM perf ...

(Dutch: ''Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieuhygiene'' or simply ''RIVM''), KNMI has developed the dispersion model PUFF. It has been designed to calculate the dispersion of

air pollution Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are many different typ ...

on European scales. The model was originally tested by using measurements of the dispersion of radioactivity caused by the accident in the nuclear power plant of

Chernobyl Chernobyl ( , ; russian: Чернобыль, ) or Chornobyl ( uk, Чорнобиль, ) is a partially abandoned city in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, situated in the Vyshhorod Raion of northern Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. Chernobyl is about no ...

in 1986. A few years later, in 1994, a dedicated dispersion experiment called ETEX (European Tracer EXperiment) was carried out, which also provided useful data for further testing of PUFF. * CALM - CALM is a CALamity Model designed for the calculation of air pollution dispersion on small spatial scales, within the Netherlands. The

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

s and

parameter A parameter (), generally, is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system (meaning an event, project, object, situation, etc.). That is, a parameter is an element of a system that is useful, or critical, when ...

s contained in the CALM model are practically identical to that of the PUFF model. However, the meteorological input can only be supplied manually in CALM. The user provides both observed and predicted values for wind velocity at the 10 meter height level, the atmospheric stability classification and the mixing height. After the model calculations have been performed, a map is created and displayed with the derived trajectories of the pollution plume and an indication of how and where the cloud will disperse.

Storm naming

In 2019 KNMI decided to join the western storm naming group to help awareness of the danger of storms, the first named storm was

Storm Ciara Storm Ciara was a powerful and long-lived extratropical cyclone that was the first of a pair of European windstorms to affect the United Kingdom and Ireland at peak intensity less than a week apart in early February 2020, followed by Storm Denn ...

on 9 February 2020.

References

External links