Meteorologist

Briefly explain what you do for a living.

My main task is weather forecasting at the Finnish Meteorological Institute’s weather service. In addition, my work includes lecturing on weather and weather forecasting especially for children and young people, and training meteorologists in Finnish Meteorological Institute projects around the world. Forecasting weather involves a lot of cooperation with various Finnish organisations and other countries’ meteorological institutes.

How have you ended up in the profession of your choice?

In my childhood, we talked a lot about the weather at home. We planned our comings and goings according to the weather and dressed accordingly. I've been interested in space and different weather phenomena ever since I was a kid. When I started in lower secondary school, my grandfather gave me a weather diary. I kept on filling such diaries with great enthusiasm for almost 10 years. I made different graphs based on the statistics on my weather observations, because I was interested in seeing the annual variation in weather patterns. When I was in upper secondary school, I studied the types of clouds and predicting weather by reading clouds on my own. This marked the beginning of my constant thirst for knowledge. During my upper secondary school years, I browsed through a lot of Finnish weather literature.

At this point, I must point out that ever since secondary school until my graduation year, I had thought I would become a physician. However, my interest in the weather and atmosphere activities finally won. I did well in science and mathematics, so the path of becoming a meteorologist seemed like it was made for me.

Describe your typical working day or week.

My working days and, in fact, my working weeks vary considerably. During normal weather service duty, the work shifts are 7 to 10 hours long. The night shift exceptionally lasts 12 hours. When I carry out training duties abroad, the days can be very long.

The work shifts include a varied cocktail of tasks, ranging from virtual customer briefs to writing forecasts in text format, and, of course, the preparation of actual weather forecasts.

What kind of work environment or working hours do you have?

The Finnish Meteorological Institute’s weather services are housed in a single large space in which all teams in weather service duty operate. The weather must be predicted 24 hours a day every day of the year. This means that the work must be done in three shifts. Therefore, you can have your days off on a weekend or in the middle of the week.

Some of the shifts can be done remotely. The perks of working at the workplace include direct and easy communication and the best colleagues one could have. If we are facing a difficult weather situation, we encourage each other to do our best, discuss and contemplate together what kind of weather is to be expected. This is important because we work together in all hours of the day.

What kind of competence or qualities are required in the profession?

The work of a meteorologist is an expert position. It requires not only weather forecasting skills and knowledge of weather impacts, but also, for example, communication and IT skills. I would fail at my work from the very start if I could not express clearly to critical stakeholders what kind of dangers the future weather poses and what kind of consequences it may have. So, it is not enough that I have the knowledge. It is more important that I can communicate the information to others.

A solution-oriented way of thinking and the ability to work and make even difficult decisions independently are also essential. In addition, cooperation skills are important as we are working around the same weather information. Flexibility, taking account of the common interest, presentation skills and the ability to express oneself clearly are of great benefit on a daily basis. Sometimes customers also ask questions about topics that are not directly related to the weather. I will then need to start looking for a suitable answer or an expert on the subject from among my colleagues.

It brings an additional challenge to this work that, when we give training abroad, due to cultural differences, we need to think how we behave or formulate what we are saying. We Finns are very straightforward in the way we express things, compared to, for example, the Eastern cultures. It is important to tailor the information and examples for each target audience.

It surprises many people that studying as a meteorologist is all about physics. You do not encounter any kinds of maps until in master's stage of your studies. And, even then, for a few weeks only. Forecasting the weather largely requires on-the-job learning.

What is the best thing about your profession?

Every day is different, and the weather can challenge you again and again. It is not possible to know the correct answer when forecasting the weather. So, this puts both the highly experienced people in the sector and the newcomers in the same boat.

In international projects, it is extremely rewarding to see how the direction of even a large ship can be turned through cooperation. When we teach abroad, the new approaches help countries being trained move towards more sustainable weather forecasting.

What are the downsides of the profession or what seems challenging?

This profession requires pressure tolerance and good patience. Weather is something we are all familiar with. This makes ordinary citizens feel that they know everything about the weather and weather forecasting, or at least more than the expert at the other end of the line.

In addition, the provocative headlines about the weather the media comes up with often give a totally different impression of the weather than what was actually forecast. From time to time, despite best efforts, the forecasting work and communicating about it to others feels like tilting at windmills.

Due to the three-shift nature of the work, it may sometimes be challenging to adapt one's work shifts to your daily life.

What would you tell a person considering the profession of a meteorologist?

Meteorology needs more people to do both weather forecasting and research. If you are at all interested in the atmosphere and the weather, you should seek your way into the field. The job description is varied and differs from what it is generally imagined to be. Other sectors, such as aviation, energy industry and software development, are also happy to employ experts in meteorology. I think that meteorology combines theory and practice in a very unique way.

How do you see the future of your profession?

Artificial intelligence will change the field. There are already weather forecasting models that utilise artificial intelligence to improve results or speed up the processing. However, even in the future, there will be no such thing as perfect weather forecasting. And, ultimately, the usability of every weather forecasting model will be assessed by a meteorologist.

I believe that in the future meteorologists will spend more time on customer service and less time making actual weather forecasts. However, no one knows what technological development will lead to, and that is extremely exciting!