The reception at the Icelandic Met Office and projects
The Icelandic Met Office's reception was opened on December 16th at Bústaðavegur 7. The IMO is located in two buildings, Bústaðavegur 7 and Bústaðavegur 9.
Svandís Svavarsdóttir, Minister of the Environment, formally opened the new building. Solving IMO's housing problems has been an issue for a long while. In addition to the building at Bústaðavegur 9, that was taken into use in 1973, IMO has had facilities in more than one other place in the Reykjavík area. The minister announced the plan to start preparations for a new building soon.
The Icelandic Met Office gathers the most data relating to nature of all institutes in Iceland and its role in the field of natural hazards is very important.
The director general of IMO, Árni Snorrason, also gave a speech about the institute's great strength as a monitoring and research institute. Iceland became a full member of the ECMWF, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, in March 2011. As a result, a great amount of data is now accessible to the IMO that will be useful in research and greatly improve IMO's weather service.
The IMO is considered one of the most prominent institutes in the world in the field of volcano monitoring. Three permanent positions, which have recently been filled, are directly associated with volcano monitoring.
Furthermore, IMO specialists have received grants for research projects that they head.
