Good morning ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to welcome you to Iceland to the Nordic meteorological conference of 2008. As most of you are probably well aware of, the weather is one of the most important topics of interest in our everyday life here in Iceland. We Icelanders talk about the weather, we study the weather and our language is unusually rich with words which describe the tremendous variability and dramatic changes that we often experience. Some say that Icelandic weather is a merely sample of all kinds of weather.

Studying the weather, and later predicting and forecasting the weather, has long been considered among the most important and noblest of all sciences in Iceland. We possess temperature records from our first and oldest weather station (Stykkishólmur) dating well over one hundred years back. Our meteorological institute is the oldest and largest institute of the Ministry for the Environment. The institute has an exceptionally broad field of responibilities, basically covering all the inorganic nature of Iceland, except perhaps the ocean at large. This includes monitoring the geophysical parameters associated with natural hazards from avalanches and earthquakes such as the one that hit the south of the country last week.

At the beginnig of next year our Hydrological Institute and the Meteorological Office will merge and form one institute under the Ministry for the Environment. I am confident that this merger will create a strong institute with an even better capacity to deal with broad global issues like, for example, the Water Framework Directive of the European Union and the broad and complex issues of climate change at large.

Like other nations, Icelanders are quite concerned, perhaps not as concerned as they should be, about the potential impact of climate change on the nation’s main sources of livelihood such as fish stocks and our land based resources, due to potential changes in critical ocean currents, precipitation and other major parameters. These potential impacts remind us of how import it is to act as responsible world citizens in the international efforts to modify and adapt to significant climate change. These issues touch most sectors of the economy, calling for systematic cooperation between most ministries of the Icelandic government and many institutions. Our meteorologists are naturally at the center of the scientific aspects of these very complex issues. A science committee on climate change in Iceland, which I appointed last fall, is about to release its final report, the highlights of which will be presented here later this morning.

The program of this conference is very broad and ambitious. I hope that you enjoy the elements of our land and nature during the conference, elements that you know so well as scientists. Once again, I welcome you to Iceland and wish you all a pleasant and productive conference in the days ahead. I declare the Nordic Meteorological conference 2008 open.