Sir, – After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its last report, Ciarán Cuffe of the Green Party issued a statement on April 6th, 2007 predicting that the Irish experience of climate change would involve “summer droughts”. That year then saw the wettest Irish summer in 10 years with Leinster experiencing more summer rainfall than had been observed in the previous 50 years.
In 2008, summer rainfall in Ireland was above normal everywhere and more than twice the normal level in the east and southeast. For summer 2009, Met Éireann confirmed that for the third successive year, every station in Ireland reported above normal rainfall and Valentia saw the wettest summer since records began in 1866.
As someone who holidays in Ireland, could I ask the Green Party to please start predicting summer floods? I suspect many in Clonakilty may join me in that request. – Yours, etc,