Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI)

The mission of SMHI is to manage and develop information and data on weather, water, and climate that provide knowledge and advanced decision-making for public services, the private sector, and the general public.

On the one hand, as a National Oceanographic Data Centre with more than a century of experience in handling data, SMHI collects, archives, quality controls, processes, and publishes data generated by national and international activities. On the other hand, the institute has an oceanographic research department working with long‐term models, developing them, and improving the quality of forecasts.

Those complementary activities core to SMHI allow the institute to operate and propose, among others, the Swedish Ice Service. This service is responsible for providing updated information about the ice conditions in the Baltic Sea region. During the ice season, usually from November to May, the service monitors the ice and sea surface temperature and provides forecasts of weather, ice extent, and ice drift. Ice charts and reports are available free of charge on the sea ice archived charts and reports webpage.

Today SMHI contributes to Arctic ROOS via different projects and products:

  • PolarView ice models for the Baltic Region;
  • SST and Ice chart from the Baltic Region;
  • An Arctic HIROMB model;
  • Work for making semi-operational and research data available for a wider community and for operational purposes. We will focus on data collected especially at the I/B Oden expeditions;
  • A NEMO4-based high-resolution pan-Arctic coupled ocean-sea-ice model.