HIGHER THAN average summer temperatures are evidence that global warming is affecting the Irish weather, a climate scientist has said.
Dr Rodney Teck, from the Irish Climatic Analysis Research Units at NUI Maynooth, said global warming is manifesting itself in warmer nights in Ireland.
Although it was a wet summer, it was warmer than average. Every weather station, with the exception of Cork, had temperatures higher than normal. The top temperature of the summer was 27.5C, recorded on June 2nd at Claremorris, Co Mayo.
Dr Teck said the worst effects of climate change were being felt in central and southern Europe, as well as the Arctic, and that the changes were not as pronounced in Ireland because of the moderating effects of the Atlantic.
“I would say that 75 per cent of what is happening in Ireland is down to natural variability and 25 per cent down to anthropogenic factors [human-related weather factors],” he said.
“That is manifesting itself in night-time temperatures which no longer go down as low as they used to do,” he said. “On the other hand, daytime temperatures do not go up as much.”
However, Dr Teck said the hat-trick of wet summers was due to natural variables. “We have been studying weather records for the last century and there has been plenty of bad summer weather before,” he said.
RONAN McGREEVY