REVIEW article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Ocean Observation
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1561461
This article is part of the Research TopicThe State of Knowledge from Operational Ice Service Perspectives: Previous and Future MandatesView all 14 articles
The Finnish Ice Service, its sea-ice monitoring of the Baltic Sea and operational concept
Provisionally accepted
Patrick B. Eriksson*
Jouni Vainio
Niko Tollman
Anni Jokiniemi
Aleksi ArolaMarko Mäkynen
Juha KarvonenAntti Kangas- Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The Finnish Ice Service is part of the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). Based on the mandate in the Finnish legislation, it provides information on the ice conditions in the Baltic Sea. This paper introduces the methods used by the Finnish Ice Service, data sources, products, services, datasets, and supporting Baltic Sea ice remote sensing and geophysics research conducted at FMI. The predecessor of the Finnish Ice Service started its operational ice charting in 1915 to provide ice information for the winter navigation. To this day, the main users still are the winter navigation authorities, including the icebreaker fleet and management, as well as the shipping community, scientists and general public. The focus area is the Baltic Sea. Typically, the service operates from mid-October to the end of May, providing up-to-date sea-ice information in several products and formats. The prevailing ice situation is described in ice charts, ice reports and ice codes, which are based on a range of different observation sources like satellite images, predominantly from synthetic aperture radars, and surface observations from both icebreakers and coastal observers. The Finnish Ice Service has long sea ice observation timeseries and archives of manually analysed ice charts. To help users and customers optimize their operations in ice infested waters, the Finnish Ice Service provides numerical and manual sea ice forecasts with various forecast lengths. The Finnish Ice Service processes and disseminates satellite data and also provides advisory and consultant services to users. As FMI is committed to the open data policy, the main ice service products are provided free of charge. A number of products are also available through the Copernicus Marine Service (CMS).
Keywords: sea ice, Ice Service, remote sensing, Ice chart, Baltic Sea
Received: 15 Jan 2025; Accepted: 05 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Eriksson, Vainio, Tollman, Jokiniemi, Arola, Mäkynen, Karvonen and Kangas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Patrick B. Eriksson, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.