Cathal Nolan
speaker
74 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 26 Jul
Cathal Nolan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It certainly seems to be a new pattern that is developing.
What we have noted certainly over the last decade or so is a continued drying out of conditions during the summer, while Irish weather is still very much in the balance in terms of its location between influences from the Atlantic and some of the hotter conditions elsewhere.
that we've seen across the continent.
For ourselves, we have noted that we have a drying out pattern, specifically so in parts of the south and east of the country, and that's been reflected in the ongoing drought conditions that we've seen in parts of Leinster and Munster in particular, whereas farther towards the north and northwest, we're typically still under the influence of Atlantic conditions.
And it's been less of a case of an impact here in terms of those drought conditions so far, but it is a developing pattern.
whereby we are seeing drier conditions during the summer season.
We have indeed individually those summers when taken, let's say, out of the climate context have been exceptionally warm, exceptionally dry.
But in terms of the frequency that these are occurring, let's say, and especially with regards to the drying out of conditions, it's the overall impacts that we've seen in terms of that kind of continued drying out, greater levels of evaporation that lead to these what's called flash droughts, essentially.
And we'll talk about that in a moment with regards to the conditions that we've observed in Europe.
We're seeing increasingly in Ireland this transition between very wet conditions to very dry conditions, and the speed at which we're going from those two extremes seems to be increasing.
It's a weather phenomenon meteorologically that's known as weather whiplashing, and we've seen that occurring particularly so through the European continent more frequently as a consequence of climate change.
It certainly does.
I think in the context of, let's say, if we look at Ireland with regards to some of the wildfires that are occurring at the moment, specifically in relation to Slevenamon, but also in other areas as well, we have a tendency to utilise what we would regard as kind of degraded land or poorer land with regards to the peat bogs, let's say, on highland areas.
Frequently, we see these being planted by conifer plantations, by Sitka spruce in particular.
These particular trees are certainly known within the industry to be quite flammable in certain situations where we have higher temperatures, where we have these drought conditions.
And of course, they're planted on top of peatlands, which are then dried out further by the roots of these trees, soaking up excess water, turning one fuel source into another fuel source.
And when we get the
correct meteorological conditions for fire weather to develop, then, of course, we can see more extreme situations developing like that at Slevenemann, like that in the Sleveblom Mountains in the Leishoffli border back in 2018, and even in areas such as the Wicklow Mountains where we've seen some wildfires over the past while as well up around Glen Creek.
Absolutely.
So El Niño is a naturally occurring meteorological phenomenon.
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