Keeping an eye on climate change from Lapland

Several weeks ago I travelled up to Lapland with Petteri Taalas, the Director General of the Finnish Meteorological Institute to learn more about the leadership science that Finland and FMI were doing in monitoring and thinking about climate change.   We (Petteri, me, several other Ambassadors and several Finns from the business community) headed up above the Arctic Circle for two days of science.

School started with detailed briefings at the FMI  Arctic Research Centre at Tähelä (in Sodankylä municipality) and later we witnessed the launch of a weather balloon from that location. That night I at last got to witness the spectacle of the Northern Lights which put on a breathtaking show of green glowing solar winds blowing across our upper atmosphere.  And of course we enjoyed an evening sauna following by a dip in Lake Immel, which was still covered with ice. Talk about put things into their proper perspective.

The following day we headed over to the Pallas area for another set of briefings on FMI’s research activities there.  At the top of Sammal Mountain we spent several hours becoming familiar with that climate station.

The FMI weather and climate research station on Sammal Mountain

That research station does not simply collect of the critical data.  It also physically collects air samples which are then transported by my Embassy back to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in my home town of Boulder, Colorado.  The information gleaned from those air samples form an integral part of the body of science on climate change.

Cannisters of Lapland air for delivery to NOAA

One of the reasons that the data collected in Lapland is so valuable is because of the purity of the air in northern Finland.  Science aside, getting my lungs full of that sweet clean air was like a week at a health spa!

Finland and FMI really have much to be proud about with their global leadership in climate science and meteorology.  My deepest thanks to Petteri, his great team at FMI and my fellow travelers for an immensely important and beautiful trip to Lapland.

Petteri and me at the Sammal station