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The Vico Bathing Place in Dublin. Leon Farrell

Met Éireann staff advised to say Irish summers could get drier due to climate change

The latest projections suggested there might be fewer storms – but that the ones that do come would be worse.

STAFF AT MET Éireann were advised to say Ireland could expect more frequent hotter, drier summers as the impacts of climate change are felt here.

Advisories said we could also expect more weather records to be broken with severe storms becoming more likely.

However, the latest climate model projections suggested there might be a decreased number of storms – but that the ones that do come would be worse.

The details are contained in two advisories to staff over the past year on what to say about unusual or extreme weather events in Ireland.

A very dry spring in 2020 during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic was out of the ordinary and sparked multiple questions to Met Éireann.

Advice from a senior climatologist to colleagues said: “This year (2020), Ireland experienced a very wet February and a very dry spring.

Because of our location Ireland gets quite variable weather year to year. A detailed analysis is required to scientifically determine what influence global warming has played on the recent weather.

“However, we would expect to see more frequent hotter, drier summers as we move towards mid-century.”

As the country was battered by Storm Ellen last summer, wind speed and low-pressure records for August were broken.

At Roche’s Point in Cork, the highest mean wind speed over ten minutes was recorded with winds of 111km/hour, shattering the old record of 83km/hour set nearly fifty years ago.

Low pressure records were also broken in Athenry, Galway breaking a record that had been set in 1959.

An email to staff from a senior climatologist said: “As our climate continues to change, we expect more weather records to be broken.

The latest climate model projections for Ireland suggest possible decrease in the frequency of storms affecting Ireland by mid-century, but a likely increase in the severity of the storms that do.

Later emails said another long-standing August record had almost been broken when a gust of 143km/hour was recorded at Roche’s Point in Cork.

It was just one km/hour short of the actual record, which was set in Claremorris, Co Mayo in 1999.

There were also widespread mean wind speeds exceeding 80km/hour and widespread gusts in excess of 130km/hour, both fully meriting a “red warning” according to emails released under FOI.

Asked to comment on the records, Met Éireann said they had nothing to add to them.

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    Mute Dave Harris
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:16 PM

    Met Eireann can’t get the forecast for today right on a regular basis so I’m skeptical of their ability to tell what the future holds.

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    Mute Dylan Cotter
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    Jul 12th 2021, 2:54 PM

    @Dave Harris: Macro trends are easier to predict than the specifics… like, it’s easy to predict that 1 out of 50 comments on the Journal will be insightful but it’s hard to predict exactly when and where that comment will emerge

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    Mute David Jordan
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    Jul 12th 2021, 3:46 PM

    @Dave Harris: This is the results of a EPA funded research project in collaboration with international researchers at the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).

    Irish researchers took the global Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CHIMP5) model and used the regional Climate Model, COSMO-CLM, to downscale the global model to Ireland. Climate simulations were run by Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC), they have access to Europe’s fastest supercomputers.

    CHIMP5 climate model is the fruition of 20 international climate modelling groups e.g. HadGEM2-ES from the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre, EC-Earth consortium GCM (a pan-European collaboration), CNRM-CM5 GCM by CNRM-GAME and Cerfacs in France, MIROC5 from the Japanese research consortium, MPI-ESM-LR Earth System Model Germany etc.

    CHIMP5 is state of the art climate model, it is used e.g. by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); CHIMP6 is now under development.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20170124025620/http://cmip.llnl.gov/cmip5/index.html

    COSMO-CLM is a mesoscale weather forecast model developed initially by the German Weather Service, it is used to downscale the CHIMP5 global climate to smaller regional areas (Ireland). The COSMO-CLM model is described here:

    Rockel, B., Will, A. and Hense, A., 2008. The regional climate model COSMO-CLM (CCLM). Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 17(4), pp.347-348.

    Here are the results for Ireland:

    “High-resolution Climate Projections for Ireland – A Multi-model Ensemble Approach” – Dr Paul Nolan and Dr Jason Flanagan of the Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) NUI Galway. – https://www.epa.ie/publications/research/climate-change/research-339-high-resolution-climate-projections-for-ireland-.php

    Also, importantly, the climate predictions for Ireland were validated for accuracy.

    They did this by Backcasting, they simulated past climate and compared it with weather data in Ireland recorded between 1981 and 2000. Backcasting is the opposite of a forecasting, it’s a simulated Past/Historical Climate. The idea as if a backcasted climate matches past climate, that we have measurements for, than a foretasted climate should also match a modeled future climate.

    There is a good match:

    “The RCMs [Regional Climate Model] were validated by downscaling ERA-Interim reanalyses and the GCM [General Circulation Model] datasets for the period 1981–2000, and comparing the output with observational data. Extensive validations were carried out to test the ability of the RCMs to accurately model the temperature, precipitation, wind and humidity climate of Ireland. Results confirm that the output of the RCMs exhibit reasonable and realistic features as documented in the historical data record. The skill of the individual RCM datasets was dependent on the field under analysis (e.g. WRF performed well for precipitation but less well for wind speed). This variation in RCM skill stresses the importance of using an ensemble of RCMs to simulate climate change.”

    This validation gives them confidence that the forecast climate predictions detailed in their report are accurate. Validation of the climate model were also published in peer review e.g.

    Nolan, P., O’Sullivan, J. and McGrath, R., 2017. Impacts of climate change on mid‐twenty‐first‐century rainfall in Ireland: a high‐resolution regional climate model ensemble approach. International Journal of Climatology, 37(12), pp.4347-4363.

    Flanagan, J., Nolan, P., McGrath, R. and Werner, C., 2019. Towards a definitive historical high-resolution climate dataset for Ireland–promoting climate research in Ireland. Advances in Science and Research, 15, pp.263-276.

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    Mute lelookcoco
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    Jul 12th 2021, 4:57 PM

    @David Jordan: I have the attention span of a gnat. Your posts are way too long.

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    Mute David Jordan
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    Jul 12th 2021, 5:35 PM

    @lelookcoco: I really don’t like the tone of the Journal article, it seems to treat the emails like the Climategate emails:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy

    This advice was clearly not the personal opinions of one climatologist, who emailed Met Éireann staff and advised them what to say.

    No, these are publicly available Climate projections from an EPA funded a research project published on the Met Éireann website a few months ago:

    https://www.met.ie/ga/epa-climate-projections-2020

    It is likely that the climatologist was simply explaining the Project’s results and it’s relevance to recent weather extremes in Ireland.

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    Mute motojack
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:12 PM

    Sponsored by irish water

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    Mute Brian Tracy
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:28 PM

    Met eireann can’t predict 8 hours ahead let alone years. Ffs

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    Mute Gerard Heery
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:23 PM

    Waiting all my life for drier weather don’t make promises you can keep

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    Mute Valentine Kane
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:28 PM

    Met Eireann needs to look out the window before giving the forcast, drier me hole, its lashing out there.

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    Mute john smith iv
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:44 PM

    @Valentine Kane: I don’t think they are saying that summers will be drier from today and forever.

    44
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    Mute Pirates of Ireland
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:16 PM

    This article is fake news. Here’s the facts from Met Eireann on August last year https://www.met.ie/climate-statement-for-august-2020

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    Mute David Jordan
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    Jul 12th 2021, 4:00 PM

    @Pirates of Ireland: No sorry, you are wrong. This is the correct link:

    https://www.met.ie/ga/epa-climate-projections-2020

    Results

    The results of the climate modelling reported are in broad agreement with numerous previous studies (Nolan 2015, Nolan et al 2017). In summary, for Ireland it was found that by mid-century (2041-2060):

    • Temperatures are projected to increase by 1–1.6°C compared with the reference period (1981–2000), with an east-west gradient and with the largest increases in the east.
    • Warming will be enhanced at the extremes, with summer daytime and winter night-time temperatures projected to increase by 1–2.4°C.
    • the number of frost and ice days will decrease by approximately 50%; summer heatwave events are expected to occur more frequently; precipitation is expected to become more variable, with substantial projected increases in the occurrence of both dry periods and heavy precipitation events.
    • Snowfall is projected to decrease substantially across the country; specific humidity is projected to increase substantially, while relative humidity is projected to increase slightly for all seasons except summer.
    • Mean 10-m wind speeds are projected to decrease for all seasons; an overall reduction of ~10% in the numbers of storms affecting Ireland, with an eastward extension of the more severe wind storms over Ireland and the UK.
    • An increase in the length of the growing season of between 12% and 16%; the energy content of the 120-m wind is projected to decrease, while a small decrease in solar photovoltaic (PV) power is projected.

    “High-resolution Climate Projections for Ireland – A Multi-model Ensemble Approach” – Dr Paul Nolan and Dr Jason Flanagan of the Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) NUI Galway http://epa.ie/pubs/reports/research/climate/researchreport339/

    The model is based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CHIMP5), the result of an international consortium of 20 research groups and COSMO-CLM is a mesoscale weather forecast model developed initially by the German Weather Service.

    The climate model they used was validated on past climate i.e. Backcasting, comparing its climate simulations with past climate for 1981-2000. This validation gives them confidence that the forecast climate predictions detailed in their report are accurate. Validation of the climate model was published in peer review:

    Nolan, P., O’Sullivan, J. and McGrath, R., 2017. Impacts of climate change on mid‐twenty‐first‐century rainfall in Ireland: a high‐resolution regional climate model ensemble approach. International Journal of Climatology, 37(12), pp.4347-4363.

    Flanagan, J., Nolan, P., McGrath, R. and Werner, C., 2019. Towards a definitive historical high-resolution climate dataset for Ireland–promoting climate research in Ireland. Advances in Science and Research, 15, pp.263-276.

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    Mute john smith iv
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    Jul 12th 2021, 9:21 PM

    @David Jordan: sounds alright. Selling the hybrid.

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    Mute Eoin Roche
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:16 PM

    Vineyards!

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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    Jul 12th 2021, 3:55 PM

    Avocado trees!

    38
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    Mute Nigel o'Neill
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:19 PM

    Some good news at last

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    Mute Jane Alford
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:34 PM

    That would be a nice change from your typical, wet, Irish summer. If not actually raining then just cloudy.

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    Mute ed w
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    Jul 12th 2021, 1:57 PM

    fantastic

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    Mute Sean Walsh
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    Jul 12th 2021, 2:35 PM

    Is it April Fools Day? Hotter, drier summers ? Have they been looking out the window this summer so far ?

    48
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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    Jul 12th 2021, 3:54 PM

    @Sean Walsh: Indeed. All I see is heavy clouds instead of the Dublin mountains. I’m sure there’s great sunshine if the Liffey would stay down. Maybe they’re sunning themselves in some places that weren’t founded on a river valley?

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    Mute john smith iv
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    Jul 12th 2021, 9:23 PM

    @Fiona Fitzgerald: This is the second time you’ve mistaken a future prediction for today’s weather forecast. Any chance you’d read the article. Or even the headline?

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    Mute Emily Barton
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    Jul 12th 2021, 2:23 PM

    This was my grandad – he wrote the Climate of Ireland and was the 4th Director of Met Eireann – I wish he was still around to tell us what he thought about this!!!
    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/the-end-of-an-era-in-irish-meteorology-1.200146

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    Mute Liam Dunne
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    Jul 12th 2021, 2:33 PM

    No mention of the fact that we also recorded a new high pressure record in March of this year. Weather forecasting in Ireland is very difficult most of the time because of our geography but there’s no reason why climate couldn’t give us better weather in general. Happy days?

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    Mute Joe ryan
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    Jul 12th 2021, 2:41 PM

    Dry summers, who knows, we’re not used to them, but they could be enjoyable

    25
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    Mute Craic-Hommy
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    Jul 12th 2021, 2:25 PM

    “Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 1.5 is liveable but locked in! 2 degrees abs we are in serious trouble. Our ability to live on this planet will be severely at risk in the next few decades. This is accepted science, no hyperbole.
    Yet Met Eireann are saying it may get drier!
    Read the truth, if you dare go there. It’s terrifying but it will be our reality
    https://www.propublica.org/article/the-climate-crisis-is-worse-than-you-can-imagine-heres-what-happens-if-you-try/amp

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    Mute john smith iv
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    Jul 12th 2021, 9:25 PM

    @Craic-Hommy: there are crackpots attached to all ideologies. Warming is happening but not everywhere is going to be unliveable.

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    Mute Nick Murphy
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    Jul 12th 2021, 5:01 PM

    Lovely

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    Mute Mary Nugent
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    Jul 12th 2021, 4:25 PM

    Staycations.

    5
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    Mute lelookcoco
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    Jul 12th 2021, 4:59 PM

    @Mary Nugent: Imagine being stuck in a caravan with three kids this week.

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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    Jul 12th 2021, 8:54 PM

    @lelookcoco: The Father Ted episode comes to mind.

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    Mute john smith iv
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    Jul 12th 2021, 9:25 PM

    @lelookcoco: it’s grand for the rest of the week.

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    Mute Elaine Phelan
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    Jul 13th 2021, 7:50 AM

    This headline is shockingly misleading. They have not been told to “say” this. They have been provided research that proves this is the case

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    Mute Iris Morgan
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    Jul 12th 2021, 5:01 PM

    Every cloud……!

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    Mute lelookcoco
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    Jul 12th 2021, 5:09 PM

    @Iris Morgan: Are you Double Iris?

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    Mute Iris Morgan
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    Jul 12th 2021, 5:04 PM

    Every Cloud…..!

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