The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (, ; KNMI) is the Dutch national

weather forecasting Weather forecasting or weather prediction is the application of science and technology forecasting, to predict the conditions of the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather info ...

service, which has its headquarters in

De Bilt De Bilt () is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and town in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht, Netherlands. It had a population of in . De Bilt houses the headquarters of the Royal Netherland ...

, in the

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

Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...

, central Netherlands. 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 a region, 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 meteoro ...

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 ...

and

seismology Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes (or generally, quakes) and the generation and propagation of elastic ...

History

Christophorus Henricus Diedericus Buys-Ballot

KNMI was established by royal decree of King William III on 31 January 1854 under the title "Royal Meteorological Observatory". Professor C. H. D. Buys Ballot 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, politician and scientist who served as the second governor of New Zealand between 1843 and 1845. He achieved lasting fame as the captain of ...

who founded the

Meteorological Office The Met Office, until November 2000 officially the Meteorological Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and ...

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

Applied research at KNMI is focused on three areas: * Research aimed at improving the quality, usefulness and accessibility of

meteorological 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, agriculture ...

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 An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosph ...

(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 earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

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 continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

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 subst ...

gases or

radioactive material A radionuclide (radioactive nuclide, radioisotope or radioactive isotope) is a nuclide that has excess numbers of either neutrons or protons, giving it excess nuclear energy, and making it unstable. This excess energy can be used in one of three ...

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 and 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 (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 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 ...

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 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 Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

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 Den ...

on 9 February 2020.

References

External links