Ongoing projects of the Climate Impacts and Adaptation unit

ACCC (Atmosphere and Climate Competence Centre, 2021–2028). The project supports Finland, the EU, and ultimately the world in achieving the Paris climate targets and adapting to climate change with sustainable, cost-effective, and research-based solutions. We study ways to mitigate climate change by increasing carbon sequestration in forests and soils. We also explore air quality and its link to climate and health aiming for clean air. Active collaboration between interdisciplinary research and public and private sector actors enables effective mitigation and adaptation measures at the national and international level. It also supports the implementation of climate policy. Collaboration with companies generates new practical solutions such as atmospheric measurement instruments, climate and air quality analysis and monitoring services, and improved verification solutions linking multi-level data. Partners: Helsinki University (coordinator), FMI, University of Eastern Finland, and Tampere University. Funding: Research Council of Finland. Contact: Hilppa Gregow.

ALBATROS (Advanced systems and solutions for better practices against hazards in the aviation system, 2022–2026). The project aims to increase the safety and preparedness of aviation to face especially the following factors and risks related to them: new technologies (hydrogen- and electric-powered aircraft), weather (climate change and extreme weather events), increased traffic, and cyber security. FMI’s contribution ends in 9/2025. Partners: NLR – Netherlands Aerospace Centre (coordinator), FMI, the University of Oulu, and several European partners. Funding: EU Horizon Europe. Contact: Ilari Lehtonen.

CLAIMS (From climate change to attribution of extremes and their impacts in Finland and northern Europe, 2024–2028). The project studies and defines the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events and their consequences in Finland and Northern Europe. It develops methods and tools to assess how climate change has influenced individual weather phenomena and the related damages – in the past, present, and future. The results will provide new ways to produce real-time information on the effects of climate change to support weather services and risk assessment. Partners: Finnish Meteorological Institute, University of Helsinki. Funding: Research Council of Finland. Contacts: Joonas Merikanto (Climate System Modelling), Anna Luomaranta.

CLIMAAX (CLIMAte risk and vulnerability Assessment framework and toolboX, 2023–2026) project develops guidelines and a toolbox (a collection of software tools and data) to help regions all across the EU to perform climate risk analysis in a more standardised manner. Partners: Deltares (coordinator), FMI, the Ministry of the Interior Finland, Emergency Services Academy Finland, and several European partners. Funding: EU Horizon Europe. Contact: Thomas Kühn.

CLIMFOCI (The perfect storm - unraveling the climatic and ecological factors driving current and future occurrence of TBEV foci across scales, 2025–2029). The aim of this multidisciplinary project is to investigate the climatic and ecological drivers of TBEV (tick-borne encephalitis virus) establishment and circulation in boreal environment. The results of the project and their dissemination will help prevent the spread of TBEV to humans. Partners: In addition to FMI (coordinator), Natural Resources Institute Finland, the University of Finland, and the University of Helsinki. Funding: Research Council of Finland. Contact: Juha Aalto.

GUVIR (Global UV radiation variability, trends and impact on the seasonality of viral infections, 2025–2029). The project aims to elaborate on the role of solar UVR on the seasonality of viral infections and the intensity of waves of epidemics. Molecular level studies will be conducted in laboratory and field experiments to study the effects of UVR on the genetic stability and infectivity of viruses. Epidemiological modeling will be used to study UVR impacts on the onset and intensity of epidemics. Global UVR trends will be calculated from biologically weighted satellite UVR data. Partners: FMI (coordinator), University of Helsinki. Funding: Research Council of Finland. Contacts: Kaisa Lakkala (Atmospheric Radiation), Lisa Haga.

IBA-CRISTAL (Climate knowledge for resilient transport and logistics in the Baltic Region, 2024–2026). The project produces detailed and tailored information on changes in transport conditions and potential risks in a changing climate. This information will help transport system actors in the Baltic Sea region to better adapt to and prepare for the future impacts of climate change. Partners: FMI. Funding: Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (projects that strengthen cooperation in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea and the Arctic regions). Contacts: Joonas Merikanto (Climate System Modelling), Thomas Kühn.

ILMOS Uusimaa (Climate change information to support municipal adaptation efforts, 2025–2027). The project provides up-to-date climate change information to support adaptation efforts in municipalities. The aim is to examine the entire adaptation chain in the Uusimaa region. The project will produce high-resolution climate data on past and future climate. It will also generate information on the economic impacts of adaptation measures or the costs of inaction. Partners: FMI (coordinator), Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen, Tuusula, Kerava, and Järvenpää. Contact: Anna Luomaranta.

2035LEGITIMACY (Leaving No One Lost in Transition: Citizens and the Legitimacy of Finland’s Transition to a Carbon Neutral Welfare State, 2019–2026). The project seeks to find concrete means to enhance the legitimacy of Finland’s carbon neutrality transition. Through multidisciplinary research, the it explores issues such as the fairness and legitimacy of climate policies in general, the impacts on employment and income distribution. In addition to legal, economic and sociological perspectives, the project includes understanding the climate impacts of Finland's carbon neutrality policy and building legitimacy through climate science. Partners: University of Eastern Finland (coordinator), FMI, Finnish Environment Institute, University of Jyväskylä, VATT Institute for Economic Research, University of Helsinki. Funding: The Strategic Research Council (SRC) within the Research Council of Finland. Contact: Thomas Kühn.

MAGICA(MAximising the synergy of European research Governance and Innovation for Climate Action, 2022–2026). The project accelerates the development and transfer of knowledge from science to policy and practice within the European Research Area (ERA). It supports innovation to inform and support policy making and climate actions via a better coordination of on-going and future initiatives and a more efficient use of resources. It establishes an operational framework that enhances the alignment and coordination of climate change research programmes across the ERA, putting the highest quality, cutting-edge climate science into the hands of the decision-makers. Partners: Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) (coordinator), FMI, and several other European partners. Funding: EU Horizon Europe. Contact: Heikki Tuomenvirta.

MAWECLI (MArine and WEather events in the changing CLImate as potential external hazards to nuclear safety, 2023–2025). The main objective of the project is to increase preparedness towards single and compound marine and atmospheric extreme events in the changing climate that may pose external hazards at plant level. In addition, the project aims at enhancing methods on physical and statistical modelling, extreme value analysis and uncertainty quantification by joining expertise of scientists from various disciplines. Partners: FMI. Funding: The Finnish State Nuclear Waste Management Fund. Contact: Ulpu Leijala (Marine Research), Kirsti Jylhä.

NorBalFoodSec (Future Food Security in the Nordic-Baltic Region: Merging Past, Present, and Future, 2023–2026). The purpose of this consortium is toThe project will build a Nordic-Baltic-level crop and climate information data store that allows Nordic and Baltic crop breeders to quickly access a broad array of weather and crop productivity information. In addition, we the project will provide flexible statistical tools that will enable researchers to relate historical crop performance to weather and determine how future crops will perform in a changed Nordic-Baltic climate. Partners: Norwegian Computing Center (NR) (coordinator), FMI, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Graminor, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Boreal, Agricultural University of Iceland (LBHI), Sejet, Nordic Seed. Funding: NordForsk. Contact: Otto Hyvärinen.

PIISA (Piloting Innovative Insurance Solutions for Adaptation, 2023–2026). The project brings together 12 European organisations to co-develop climate resilient insurance portfolios and solutions for sharing climate-related risk and losses data. The focal sectors benefiting from the project are agriculture, forestry, cities and citizens’ well-being. Project tackles multiple climate enhanced hazards such as floods, droughts, forest fires, biotic risks, and storms. Project is coordinated by FMI. Funding: EU Horizon Europe. Contact: Hilppa Gregow.

PLOTO (Improving the Resilience of Inland Waterways against Climate Change, 2022–2026). The project aims at increasing the resilience of the Inland WaterWays (IWW) infrastructures and the connected land infrastructures, thus ensuring reliable network availability under unfavourable conditions, such as extreme weather, accidents and other kinds of hazards. Partners: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (coordinator), FMI, and several European organisations. Funding: EU Horizon Europe. Contact: Ilari Lehtonen.

RESICLIM (Resilience of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems under bioclimatic change, 2021-2025). The project explores recent changes in Arctic ecosystems and the climatic and local factors behind them. It utilizes state-of-the-art climate data and long-term high-resolution satellite image time series to examine local ecosystem changes and their causes. The project aims to produce maps of both Arctic change and ecosystem resilience i.e. the capacity of ecosystems to resist and recover from change. The results and methods of the research will support decision-making and conservation efforts in Arctic regions. Partners: University of Helsinki (coordinator) and FMI. Funding: Research Council of Finland. Contact: Juha Aalto.

Trees4Adapt (Addressing complex risks from climate change and biodiversity loss across systems and scales: Leveraging the potential of tree-based solutions for adaptation in Europe, 2025–2029). The project will improve empirical understanding of interdependencies of climate change and biodiversity loss and how these shape complex environmental risks. The project will develop evidence-based tools and solutions – focusing on tree-based solutions – that enhance climate resilience while simultaneously supporting biodiversity. FMI leads a task focusing on understanding microclimate dynamics and other abiotic factors as a function of tree diversity and forest composition. Partners: Natural Resources Institute Finland (coordinator), FMI & several international research organisations and universities. Funding: EU Horizon Europe. Contact: Juha Aalto.

VALORADA (Validated local risk actionable data for adaptation, 2023–2026). The project aims to empower European regions and cities to steer societal transformation towards sustainable and climate-resilient development. Project reaches for the untapped potential of existing data in adapting to climate change. This is done by integrating datasets that merge local knowledge with climate and non-climate datasets through co-developed data manipulation tools and climate data. Partners: HEREON (coordinator), FMI, HCU, ECMWF, Climate-KIC, EARSC, Aerospace valley, TerraNIS, G.A.C, CMCC, Terra Spatium SA, University of Thessaloniki, TAKT-IKI, Asitis. Funding: EU Horizon Europe. Contact: Eeva Kuntsi-Reunanen.

WIND-IMPACT (Insights into Future Extreme Windstorms: Dynamics and Impacts, 2025–2029). In this project we investigate how climate change affects the characteristics of windstorms in northern Europe by using projections from a digital twin of Earth at unprecedented kilometre-scale resolution. We also develop machine learning based models to predict the impact of these storms on the electrical grid and apply these tools to quantify the future risks of windstorms to the electricity network. Additionally, we estimate the future socio-economic losses from windstorms and explore the potential of economic mechanisms to mitigate their impacts. Partners: University of Helsinki (coordinator) and FMI. Funding: Research Council of Finland. Contact: Antti Mäkelä.

Participation to international consulting

Experts of Weather and Climate Change Impact Research also participate in international consulting