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Météo-France is the official Frenchmeteorological administration, also offering services to Andorra and Monaco. 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 monitoring snowpack. The organization also issues weather warnings for the Metropole and the overseas territories. Météo-France is also in charge of recording and predicting the climate.
Organisation
The organisation was established by decree in June 1993 and is a department of the Ministry of Transportation. It is headquartered in Paris but many domestic operations have been decentralised to Toulouse. Its budget of around €300 million is funded by state grants, aeronautic royalties and sale of commercial services.
In addition to its operations in metropolitan France, the agency provides forecasts and warnings for the French overseas départements and collectivités. It has four sub-divisions based in Martinique (with further divisions serving Guadeloupe and French Guiana), New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Réunion. Some of these sub-divisions have particularly important international responsibilities:
The French Polynesia sub-division, whilst not the official RSMC for tropical cyclones in the South Pacific, has been mandated by the WMO to issue forecasts and warnings of tropical cyclones for the neighbouring British Pitcairn Islands.
Naming
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).
Services
Météo-France has a warning system to inform the population of dangerous weather conditions.
Météo-France heat alert, part of its vigilance system [fr], was put in place following the 2003 European heat wave. The 2022 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 the 2003 heat wave.[2]
