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Hotter temperatures and more extreme weather events are on the way, according to the most up-to-date climate models for Ireland.
A new report by climate scientists at the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) provides the clearest picture yet of how climate change will affect Ireland over the next 80 years.
Hotter temperatures, more frequent and intense extreme weather events, and wetter winters followed by drier summers are some of the findings from the report – which aligns broadly with previous analyses – adding confidence to the new projections, while including more data and more detailed spatial resolution.
“The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of climate change on the future climate of Ireland using the most up-to-date regional and global climate models and future emissions scenarios,” explains Dr Paul Nolan, climate science programme manager at ICHEC and lead author of the report, which was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Met Éireann and the Marine Institute.
Nolan tells SiliconRepublic.com that he “wanted to make the research as useful as possible to a wide range of stakeholders”, so as well as the standard climate fields such as temperature and rainfall, the report includes predictions of wind power at turbine height, photovoltaic for solar energy applications and changes to the growing season for agricultural applications.
Because it is uncertain how much or if greenhouse gas emissions will be decreased in the future, the report presents predictions under four emissions scenarios, ranging from a scenario where there are major cuts to emissions to a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario of high emissions.
Findings relevant across sectors
The report predicts that under a low-emissions scenario, Ireland’s average temperature could rise by up to 0.7 degrees Celsius by 2050, keeping the country below the 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming targeted in the 2015 Paris Agreement. However, under a high-emissions scenario, temperatures are predicted to increase by as much as 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, with the largest increases in the east of the country. This finding underscores the significance of reducing emissions as much and as quickly as possible to remain within safe planetary boundaries.
Across all emissions scenarios, heatwaves are set to become more frequent in Ireland, while frost and ice days will decrease. “Such projections inform the health sector since the old and vulnerable will be at higher risk of heat stress,” Nolan says. “Also, the building sector may need to rethink building design with a view to cooling.”
Rainfall is predicted to become more variable, meaning that there will be increases in dry spells followed by more intense extreme rainfall events. Snowfall is expected to decline sharply, with a reduction of 84pc by 2100 under the high-emissions scenario.
The report predicts longer growing seasons, which will benefit agriculture. However, Nolan notes that “projected increases in extreme temperatures, heatwaves, heavy precipitation and dry periods will have substantial adverse effects on agriculture”.
Of particular significance for the renewable energy sector is the finding of “a small, but robust, projected decrease in both wind and solar power”, which decreases further under high-emissions scenarios and for later time periods, Nolan says. “These results will inform the energy sector who expect that the projected decrease in the renewable energy resource will be balanced by an increase in efficiency of solar and wind energy technologies.”
By providing up-to-date predictions for Ireland’s future climate, the research team hopes the data will be used to inform policymaking and aid in more specialised areas of research. For example, it can be used in models to predict river and coastal flooding or to predict changes in grass-growing and disease risks for crops and livestock.
A need for supercomputing sovereignty?
To ensure that the findings were as accurate as possible, the researchers ran several simulations in what is known as an ‘ensemble’ that takes data from multiple global datasets and uses several regional climate models.
“Running such a large ensemble of high-resolution regional climate models is a first for Ireland,” Nolan says. For this “substantial computational task”, the researchers used supercomputers at the ICHEC and at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for extended periods over the course of five years.
However, Ireland’s national supercomputer Kay, which was based at ICHEC, was decommissioned in 2023, resulting in the outsourcing of supercomputing services on a commercial basis since then. ICHEC currently supports Irish users to access the national supercomputer platform of Luxembourg, MeluXina.
The Irish Government last year announced a review of Ireland’s high-performance computing needs, with a report expected early this year. Nolan says he’s hopeful that the review will sanction co-funding of the CASPIr supercomputer to be housed at ICHEC, which was approved for co-funding by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking in 2022.
“State-of-the-art climate modelling requires a platform such as CASPIr, which is built with data services at its core,” Nolan says.
“Under the best-case scenario, the CASPIr service would open in late 2026, and Ireland would then regain its sovereignty for climate-modelling work.”
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