Weather application developed by Finnish Meteorological Institute launched in Jamaica
Photo: Pixabay.The weather application named Jamaica Weather was launched in Jamaica during last summer. The application is developed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and is based on the same local weather application that FMI implements in Finland. The application was released by Meteorological Service of Jamaica (MSJ).
Jamaica Weather provides, among other things, five-day local forecasts and early-warnings issued by MSJ, in order to enable the Jamaican society and citizens prepare for different weather conditions and severe weather events.
The FMI-built open-source weather forecast and early-warning production system SmartMet is used in the background of the weather application. The MSJ has been using the SmartMet system for over 10 years to disseminate the weather forecast and early-warning services, and now the system has been expanded by providing every citizen with the mobile weather application.
"This is the first installation of the FMI-built SmartMet mobile weather application in international projects and we are planning to install the app in some other FMI’s project countries, as well", says Matti Eerikäinen, Head of Group at FMI.
With real-time updating weather forecasts and early-warnings, the quality and accessibility of these services is significantly improved by the SmartMet mobile application. Moreover, the application provides more user-friendly platform for dissemination of this information and services. For example, the early warnings are visualized over a map in different colors, based on the event severity. The warning information also includes information on the impacts of the event.
The installation of the mobile app in Jamaica was funded through CREWS (Climate Risk Early Warning System) Caribbean -programme and it was implemented in cooperation with UK-based social enterprise Resurgence, Jamican-based Caribbean Climate Innovation Center and Meteorological Service of Jamaica.
Further information:
Head of Group Matti Eerikäinen, Finnish Meteorological Institute, tel. +358 40 7031434, matti.eerikainen@fmi.fi