{"id":270645,"date":"2026-01-06T17:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T17:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/270645\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T17:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T17:24:07","slug":"expect-more-extreme-weather-as-climate-change-impact-now-stark-says-met-eireann-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/270645\/","title":{"rendered":"Expect more extreme weather as climate change impact now \u2018stark\u2019, says Met \u00c9ireann \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Climate change<\/a> was directly responsible for some of the weather extremes last year, Met \u00c9ireann<\/a> has said. <\/p>\n

Last year was the second warmest year on record, surpassed only by 2023. <\/p>\n

The average temperature was 11.14 degrees. This was 1.59 degrees above the 1961-1990 long-term average and almost a degree warmer than even the revised long-term averages from 1991 to 2020. <\/p>\n

The highest wind speed ever recorded in Ireland occurred during Storm \u00c9owyn<\/a> last January when a gust of 184km\/h and a 10-minute mean wind speed of 142km\/h was recorded at Mace Head on January 24th. <\/p>\n

Climatologist Paul Moore said climate change was resulting in more extreme weather events such as Storm \u00c9owyn. <\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change adds extra energy to storms. With this extra energy, storms can be bigger and stronger and more devastating,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

There were four named storms last year: \u00c9owyn in January, Floris in August, Amy in October and Bram in December. <\/p>\n

There was a marine heatwave in April and May, with Atlantic temperatures of 2-4 degrees warmer than average in offshore areas. <\/p>\n

This contributed to the spring and summer of 2025 being the warmest seasons on record, even though there was no prolonged period of hot weather. <\/p>\n

Dry soils from the warmest spring on record allowed heat to linger for longer, a marine heatwave pushed warm air up more consistently over Ireland and heat domes to the south of Europe occasionally extended as far as Ireland.<\/p>\n

Another critical factor was warmer nights, with several long-standing stations having their highest number of warm nights on record.<\/p>\n

The effects of climate change<\/a> have become more pronounced in this decade, with four of the five warmest years on record occurring consecutively. <\/p>\n

All have happened since 2022, with 2024 tying 2007 for the fourth warmest on record. The records go back to 1900. <\/p>\n

Mr Moore said the effects of climate change on Ireland have been ongoing for a couple of decades, but the impact has been more \u201cstark\u201d in recent years. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see clearly now the warming trend, as was expected. We knew it would lead to more extreme weather events. It\u2019s clear and obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of Met \u00c9ireann\u2019s 25 official weather stations had above average temperatures for the year. <\/p>\n

The highest temperature of the year for Met \u00c9ireann\u2019s synoptic station was 31.1 degrees at Mount Dillon, Co Roscommon, on July 12th, though a station at Connemara National Park recorded 32.2 degrees on July 13th. <\/p>\n

The lowest temperature of the year was minus 7.6 at Athenry, Co Galway on January 9th. <\/p>\n

Rainfall for the year was 104 per cent of the 1991-2020 long-term average. There were long periods of drought in the spring with Casement Aerodrome seeing no rain between March 28th and April 14th. <\/p>\n

May was another very dry month, but June and July were wetter than normal and last autumn was the fourth-wettest on record. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Climate change was directly responsible for some of the weather extremes last year, Met \u00c9ireann has said. Last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,442,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5602,5,960,7,8,5767],"class_list":{"0":"post-270645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-met-eireann","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-storm-eowyn","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories","26":"tag-weather-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115849321853592747","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}