Finnish Meteorological Institute

The Finnish Meteorological Institute (Finnish: Ilmatieteen laitos, Swedish: Meteorologiska institutet, or simply FMI) is the government agency responsible for gathering and reporting weather data and forecasts in Finland. 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 activities other than gathering and reporting weather data and forecasts. The headquarters of the Institute is in Kumpula Campus, Helsinki, Finland.

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 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.

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 radars.

The research areas of FMI include meteorology, air quality, climate change, earth observation, marine and arctic research. Every year FMI's researchers publish about 300 peer-reviewed articles.

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