A Climatologist and Professor at Maynooth University has said Ireland will eventually see similar effects of climate change that are being seen in Europe at the moment.
Residents and tourists in areas around the South of Spain for instance have been warned of temperatures reaching a dangerous 45C this weekend.
He said Ireland could see similar jumps in temperatures in years to come, which “will bring home the cost of climate change in a big way.”
John Sweeney, a Climatologist and Professor Emeritus at Maynooth University told Newstalk Breakfast: “We’re embarking on this third European heatwave this summer, and we’re getting a taste of it here in Ireland.
“It’s been a very sticky night for most people and even as late as 1:00 am the temperature at Dublin Airport was still at 20C and it’s only gone down to about 17C overnight.
“So, we’re in exceptional circumstances, but in Europe of course, as you say, it is now much more extreme than that with temperatures at around 42C to 45C in the South of Spain.”
Speaking about what the advancements in technology have allowed us to learn, John said: “What we can do now, in terms of Climate Science, is very different to what we could do five years ago because there are great advances in computing meaning we can now run various models of computer climates - and we can run them without CO2.
“We can say, how often does that heatwave that we might get over the next few weeks occur now, compared to how it would have occurred in pre-industrial times.”
He said the results that this technology is churning out is ‘alarming’ as statistics show heatwaves like the one at present are now 100 times more likely as a result of climate change.
John explained: “What comes out is very alarming indeed because, for most of the kind of typical heatwaves we’ve had in Europe over the past three or four years, we’re getting values of ten to 100 times more likely as a consequence of global climate change occurring.
“So the kind of events were now seeing in Europe - this summer in particular - are the kind of events that are more extreme firstly than we would have had before we started messing up the atmosphere.
“But they are also events that are going to occur much much more frequently in the future.”
UK climatologists recently published findings that show summer heatwaves of this extent are now thirty times more likely there alone.
“One recent estimate by the UK Met Office for example said that the kind of summer they had in 2018 is now thirty times more likely to occur as a consequence of what we’ve done to the atmosphere,” he said.
“So, we’re paying the price for climate change, even here in Ireland of course, we’re seeing signs of that occurring with extremes.
“But we haven’t yet seen the kind of major events that we’ve seen in the monsoon regions of India this summer, the floods in Australia, the melting glaciers in Itlay.”
He then pointed to the effects that Ireland is due to see over the coming years: “Those are the kinds of things that are down the road, which will bring home the cost of climate change in a big way.”
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