The 31st Nordic meteorological meeting

The 31st Nordic Meteorological Meeting (NMM31, www.vedur.org/index.php/nmm31) took place in Reykjavík, Iceland, 18-20 June 2018. The meeting is held biennially in the Nordic countries. NMM31 was co-organised by the Icelandic Meteorological Society (www.vedur.org), the Icelandic Meteorological Office (www.vedur.is) and the University of Iceland (www.hi.is) and consisted of 2 and a half days of science and an afternoon/evening excursion on the last day.

The presentations at the meeting were mainly oral and covered a broad spectrum of topics that are of importance and of interest for Nordic meteorology. These included numerical weather prediction, probabilistic forecasting, meteorological observations, remote sensing of the atmosphere and the surface, meteorological and climate information for the energy sector and communication of forecasts and meteorological information.

The excursion took place on what was probably the sunniest day of the year (17.6 hours of sunshine in Reykjavík), during the cloudiest summer of the last 100 years in southwest Iceland. The first stop was Þingvellir national park before heading north on a mountain road over Kaldidalur to the Borgarfjörður region. Here we looked at lava fields, the beautiful waterfalls of Hraunfossar and Barnafoss and the most powerful hot spring in Europe with a flow rate of 180 l/s of 97°C hot water, used for heating homes and businesses in the nearby towns Borgarnes and Akranes. On the way Haraldur Ólafsson educated the group about Icelandic weather, geology and history. Before heading back to Reykjavík we had dinner in Borgarnes where entertainment was provided by the group itself.

The European Meteorological Society kindly awarded a Young Scientist Travel Award to Justinas Kilpys, Vilnius University, Lithuania for his presentation “Creating a cloud-free MODIS snow cover product using spatial and temporal interpolation and temperature thresholds”.

NMM31 was a great meeting with interesting presentations, good discussions and a picturesque excursion in fantastic weather.

Guðrún Nína Petersen, Icelandic Meteorological Office
and President of Icelandic Meteorological Society