Arctic know-how

Arctic competence industry in Muonio

Arctic nature, the world's purest air, cold and frost, and natural snow for about 6 months every year - Thanks to Muonio-like natural conditions, significant international activities have been concentrated here.

In addition to the nature tourism industry, which is strongly based on arctic nature, Muonio has a long tradition of cold testing cars. A large number of services and industry expertise have been built around cold technology. A central role is also played by the local Vocational Training Center Lappia, Fell Lapland competence center, which trains new experts in the field.

The latest innovative opening is the Aurora smart road, which was completed in the fall of 2017, which enables experiments in smart traffic and predictive road condition management by providing physical infrastructure and information services to support the tests.

Aurora's smart road is an open test bed. Data collected from the road and its surroundings is freely available to operators through the Fintraffic's Digitraffic service. Testing can focus on e.g. locating vehicles in a situation where the road is covered with snow and ice.

E8 - Aurora smart roadThe ten-kilometer smart road (Pahtonen - Puthaanranta) located on Highway 21 offers the conditions for testing automatic vehicles and related technologies in challenging road and weather conditions. Road equipment supports the technical performance of vehicles.

www.snowbox.fi

Cold testing of cars | Lapland Proving Ground

Lapland Proving Ground's new test area is designed for cold vehicle testing. The size of the full-service test area is more than 500 hectares. The Proving ground currently provides 20 km of different land-based test tracks, up to 10 km of ice tracks on the lake and a large workshop which is connected to the offices and the conference room.

www.laplandpg.fi

Pallas Atmosphere-Ecosystem Supersite

The Finnish Meteorological Institute's Pallas research station (Pallas Supersite) is located in sparsely populated Finnish Lapland, 170 km north of the Arctic Circle, in the Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park. Climate monitoring in the area dates back to the 1930s, when meteorological measurements were started at Lake Pallasjärvi. Global interest in air quality grew in the early 1990s, when Pallas started e.g. sulfur dioxide, ozone, and small particle measurements at the Sammaltunturi research station. Today, research and development activities focus on current challenges related to climate and air quality in Finland and internationally.

The measurement of air quality and fine particles requires dozens of different measuring devices, which are used to study chemical compounds and physical properties of particles such as their size or mass. In Pallas marshes, e.g. carbon cycle and the climate effect of bogs from the Ice Age to today. Pallas's results are used by the entire world's research community (e.g. ICOS, GAW, ACTRIS and EMEP networks) and are used to monitor how well our atmosphere is doing.

The air in the area is among the purest in the world in international comparisons. The reason is that there are very few local emissions in the area and the location is far from large cities and industrial concentrations. The concentration level of small particles in Pallas is about 2–3 µg/m3, which is clearly below e.g. WHO annual guideline value.

https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/pallas-atmosphere-ecosystem-supersite