FMI provides weather forecasts at all time ranges, from the very-short range (often called Nowcasting) to 10 days ahead, and beyond. The Institute generates warnings against wind storms at sea and over land, thunderstorms, heavy precipitation causing warm season floods or wintertime snow accumulation, ice formation on structures, forest and grass fires, hazardous UV radiation and, specific to this project, warnings against high-impact road weather, tackling even dangerous pedestrian conditions.
The Meteorological Research unit of the Institute, with as personnel of c. 40, develops and maintains a state-of-the-art very-high-resolution numerical weather prediction system (HIRLAM) which is based on physical modeling of the sate of the atmosphere. Medium-range forecast output disseminated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is further applied to generate new advanced forecast products that support operational weather forecasting.
Pertti Nurmi (Ph.Lic.) received the M.Sc. degree (meteorology, mathematics, statistics) in 1980, and the Ph.Lic. degree (meteorology) in 1985, from the University of Helsinki. He has a 25 year experience in meteorological research and application development activities. He is presently Head of the Meteorological Applications research group of FMI. His work history covers supervising of FMI's internal and end-user dedicated development projects. His specialized personal expertise is in the field of meteorological forecast verification/validation research and development of operational forecast quality control systems, where he has gained an international status. His other international commitments cover close liaison with the ECMWF, as the national meteorological contact point and Technical Advisory Committee adviser, as well as membership in scientific working groups of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and partnership in numerous international R&D projects.
Marjo Hippi (M.Sc.) received the M.Sc. degree (meteorology, physics, geophysics, mathematics, computer sciences) in 2004 from the University of Helsinki. She has six years of experience in weather forecasting as a duty forecaster. For the last four years she has been associated with the developing of FMI’s road weather forecasting model and participating in several projects dealing with road weather and public safety on the roads. She is presently doing her postgraduate studies in the Meteorological Applications research group of FMI.
Contribution in ROADIDEA:
FMI develops road weather and road condition models using new data fusion methods and develops verification methods. FMI also contributes to development of pilot services and commercial exploitation.