International support to Ukrainian Hydrometeorological service in the 19th WMO Congress
The on-going military aggressions have destroyed a large fraction of weather observation capacity in Ukraine. Additionally, the capacity of Ukraine to secure high quality weather and early warning services is limited due to current boundary conditions. The activities of Ukrainian State Emergency Service, however, demand reliable weather and early warning information when securing and saving the life of civilians.
International community in the field of hydrometeorological service has been meeting during the 19th Congress of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva, Switzerland from 22 May to 2 June 2023. During the WMO Congress, Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center (UHMC) organized a side event to strengthen the collaboration and support between Ukrainian, European and other international partners to facilitate UHMC to better serve the county with trustworthy weather, climate and early warning information in short and long terms.
The event was opened by H.E. Yevheniia Filipenko, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Ukraine, Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the UN Office and other International Organizations in Geneva, and H.E. Kirsti Kauppi, Ambassador and Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of Finland in Geneva. WMO, Cooperation between European Meteorological services (EUMETNET), and European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) announced newly launched in-kind collaborations with and support to UHMC. Both WMO and ECMWF promised near-real time weather forecast outputs free of charge. EUMETNET community has given UHMC a free of charge access to European wide collaboration to exchange weather early warning information through Meteo Alarm service.
Starting in January 2022, UHMC has been in a process of modernizing its weather forecasting, climate and early warning services through the development collaboration with FMI and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. The Ukraine side event in the 19th WMO Congress is considerably adding value to the development efforts by FMI.
"This event demonstrated strong, concrete support from the international community of hydrometeorological services to our Ukrainian sister organization. Our collaboration project with UHMC has developed the required base for UHMC to benefit from donations and support announced by several organizations today", summarises Harri Pietarila, Head of Expert Services at FMI.
More information:
Collaboration between Finnish Meteorological Institute and Ukrainian weather service continues
Project Manager Anne Hirsikko, Finnish Meteorological Institute, tel. 050 468 6753, anne.hirsikko@fmi.fi