SMHI, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, is a governmental institute under the auspices of the Swedish Ministry of the Environment. SMHI comprises expertise within the fields of meteorology, climatology, hydrology and oceanography. SMHI has about 600 employees. The research staff includes some 55 scientists, 45 at the Research unit and 10 at the Rossby Centre. The Research unit is divided into four groups: Meteorological analysis and forecasting, Atmospheric research, Oceanography, and Hydrology. Environmental research spans over all the disciplines. There is also a project leader for SMHI´s contributions to the HIRLAM (High Resolution Limited Area Model) project. The main goal of the Research unit is to support the institute with research and development, but there is also involvement in many national and international research projects. A separate research unit for regional climate modelling, the Rossby Centre, was established at SMHI in 1997.

The Rossby Centre is the core group of SWECLIM (Swedish Regional Climate Modelling Programme), based at SMHI. It develops models for use in the development of regional climate change scenarios for the Nordic Region. It also performs limited area climate modelling studies, producing climate scenarios for use by interested external groups both in the industrial and research arena. As a core group it supports regional climate studies in a distributed network of Swedish Universities.

This proposal also falls within the work carried out by the Atmospheric research group, where the research covers a range of topics including:

• remote sensing of clouds and precipitation (satellite and radar),

• measurements and modelling of radiation and total ozone, modelling of tracer transport,

• deposition and atmospheric chemistry.

SMHI is also partner in two EUMETSAT SAFs (Satellite Application Facility) on Climate Monitoring and Nowcasting, respectively. Large systems developed and used in this group are SCANDIA (SMHI Cloud Analysis Model using Digital AVHRR Data), RAVE (Radar Analysis and Visualisation Environment), and MATCH (Multiple-Scale Atmospheric Transport and Chemistry Modelling System). Many of the models and analysis systems are coupled to HIRLAM, MESAN (Mesoscale Analysis System) and the output of the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts).