Climate Change 

It seems that climate change is currently one of the most significant environmental problems changing the Earth and its nature and affecting human activity. As climate change gathers pace, its direct and indirect effects will become more concrete during the coming decades. Finland, as a northern country, is part of an area in which global warming is taking place at more than twice the average rate. As a result, the impact of climate change will be seen here earlier and it will be more powerful than in regions further south.

As yet, Finland has only scant knowledge about the required ways of managing and controlling the effects of climate change and about the effects that such action will have.

Thanks to measures already implemented, Finland is well placed to carry out new multidisciplinary research with a scientific and social impact. Interdisciplinary research is needed to promote public debate and to support national and international decisions on measures to mitigate climate change and adapt to it. New research is needed in particular into ways of curbing the growing energy consumption of households and traffic, potential applications of new technology and ways of adapting to extreme situations brought about by climate change.

Climate change and its different effects are the subject of intensive research all over the world. In Finland, such research has been supported by two programmes: the Finnish Research Programme on Climate Change SILMU (1990–1995) and the Finnish Global Change Research Programme FIGARE (1999–2002).