Established on March 1, 1953.
Its principal research areas are:
- studying patterns in the formation of climate, weather, hydrological processes, agrometeorological conditions, severe meteorological events; developing models, methods and techniques of forecasting;
- studying fundamental atmospheric physical processes; fundamental research into active influence on meteorological processes and events;
- developing methods and tools for hydrometeorological observations; computer technologies for data acquisition, storage and processing, for analysis and generalization of hydrometeorological information; working out draft national normative documents in hydrometeorology;
- studies, assessments and prognoses of hydrometeorological and hydrochemical regimes of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov;
- studies and prognoses of the chemical and radiological status of the natural environmet; studies of natural and human-induced impacts on the environment.
Major research achievements and developments:
- assessment of the peculiarities of current climate formation in Ukraine in the context of global climate change;
- regional numerical models for weather forecasting with various lead time;
- a technology of artificial precipitation increase and a technique for dispersion of supercooled clouds and fogs;
- a set of microphysical numerical models of artificial crystallization of supercooled clouds with crystallization agents, and models of total sowing of frontal mixed clouds with the aim of precipitation management;
- a spectral microphysical cloud model to assess parametrization of the processes of cloud and precipitation formation in regional atmospheric models;
- methods of agricultural crop prediction;
- the first stage of the National hydrometeorological observation system relying on data of geostationary and polar orbiting satellites;
- integrated systems for forecasting floods, high water, ice events and mudflows on Ukrainian rivers;
- the theory and methods to assess the state of surface water in Ukraine and prognosticate its quality;
- mathematical modeling of dynamic processes in coastal water and estuaries of the Sea of Azov/Black Sea Basin.