The Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has announced that it will stop using the HIRLAM weather forecast model in October 2022.
Many of FMI’s forecasts and services have been based on the HIRLAM weather forecast model since 1990. These products have now gradually been replaced to utilize other weather models.
The HIRLAM model will be mainly replaced by the HARMONIE (MEPS) weather forecast model, which is better suited to assessing uncertainty related to small-scale weather phenomena and forecasts.
HARMONIE (MEPS) is a so-called ensemble forecast system, which means that the weather forecast model runs several slightly different forecasts at the same time. The more difficult it is to predict the weather, the greater the dispersion of forecasts. The development of the weather model will continue in extensive international cooperation with ACCORD.
Changes in open data materials
HIRLAM weather forecast data will be removed from the FMI’s open data service on November 1, 2022.
In Northern Europe, the HARMONIE (MEPS) weather forecast data can be used as a replacement weather forecast model. The model predicts weather in the Finnish, Baltic and Scandinavian regions with a horizontal resolution of 2.5km up to two days away.
New weather model data covering the whole world has also been published in the FMI’s open data service. The forecasts for this global weather model by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are run twice a day and cover the weather for a 10-day period. The data to be shared in the open data service is reduced to 44km of horizontal resolution.