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| Department overview | |
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| Formed | 18 June 1993; 32 years ago (1993-06-18) |
| Jurisdiction |  France[a] |
| Headquarters | 73, avenue de Paris,Saint-Mandé 42, avenue Gaspard-Coriolis,Toulouse |
| Employees | 2735 (as of 2020[update])[1] |
| Minister responsible | |
| Parent department | Ministry of Ecological Transition and Cohesion of Territories |
| Website | meteofrance |
| Footnotes | |
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Météo-France is the officialFrenchmeteorological administration, also offering services toAndorra andMonaco. It has the powers of the state and can exercise them in relation to meteorology. Météo-France is in charge of observing, studying, and forecasting weather and monitoringsnowpack. The organization also issuesweather warnings for theMetropole and theoverseas territories. Météo-France is also in charge of recording and predicting the climate.
The organisation was established by decree in June 1993 and is a department of the Ministry of Transportation. It is headquartered inParis but many domestic operations have been decentralised toToulouse. Its budget of around €300 million is funded by state grants, aeronautic royalties and sale of commercial services.
Météo-France has a particularly strong international presence, and is the French representative at theWorld Meteorological Organization. The organisation is a leading member ofEUMETSAT, responsible for the procurement ofMeteosat weather satellites. It is also member of theInstitut au service du spatial, de ses applications et technologies. It is also a critical national weather service member of theECMWF and hosts one of two major centres of theIFSnumerical weather prediction model widely used worldwide.
In addition to its operations in metropolitan France, the agency provides forecasts and warnings for the French overseasdépartements andcollectivités. It has four sub-divisions based inMartinique (with further divisions servingGuadeloupe andFrench Guiana),New Caledonia,French Polynesia andRéunion. Some of these sub-divisions have particularly important international responsibilities:
Although the original name of the organisation was "Météo-France", with acute accents and normal French capitalisation, all the publications made by Météo-France are now using the name written with capitals only, without any accents, everywhere the name is used as a trademark for the products and services delivered by the national organisation.
This trademark decision reflects the need to have its name not altered in electronic documents due to transcoding errors, and to allow easier international references in many languages, including when referencing the organisation itself (in copyright notices for example, or when citing sources).
The name in capitals or with normal capitalisation with accents is protected internationally under trademark law, and as an organisation name. Some non-binding information documents sometimes forget the hyphen in the name (but the hyphen is normally required).
Météo-France has a warning system to inform the population of dangerous weather conditions.
Météo-France heat alert, part of itsvigilance system [fr], was put in place following the2003 European heat wave. The2022 heat wave was the earliest in the year since records began and marked the fourth time that a red heat alert had been issued since the protocol was activated after the2003 heat wave.[2]
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