How Will El Niño Impact Ireland This Autumn?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Last word of the environment time with John Gibbons. Now John, we heard from Tom during the five o five that Metair and say that it was two degrees warmer than the long term average temperatures in Ireland this summer. Six of the ten hottest summers have come since two thousand and one. This summer was also drier than average. So June, July, and August saw average temperatures of just over sixteen degrees Celsius. Sure, sixteen degrees is nothing, isn't it? I mean like Wouldn't we love it to be sixteen degrees in more months than that? Wouldn't we love it to be even warmer than a sixteen degrees average? It's a nothingness.
How much hotter was Ireland’s summer compared to the long‑term average?
Yeah, well good evening, Matt. I suppose the the people who've been experiencing drought conditions in much of Ireland over the last couple of months might disagree. Uh and of course that's sixteen degrees, I assume we're talking about a mean temperature. In other words, that's a twenty four hour temperature. So it would take in into account the night as well, because your listeners will be going, Hang on a second, it was a lot warmer than sixteen degrees. So just for for clarity, yeah, you're looking at a mean temperature.
Although I think it was about sixteen degrees in enormous hot of the nights in June, July, and August.
That's exactly right. And it's one of the the sort of fingerprints of of of global warming is nighttime temperatures. And the reason of course is that as the atmospheric blanket uh of of Heat trapping gases thickens, it's the inability at night of those of of the warm air to escape back into the atmosphere. That's why we're finding these kind of uh tropical nights matter. I think the the the technical definition of a tropical night is where temperatures don't drop below twenty degrees centigrade.
Yeah, but they must have been lower than that because the average for June, July and August is just over sixteen degrees.
No, sure. But we had another. But that's not particularly hot, is it? Well, for Ireland, it's particularly hot. It's it's like uh as you the Medairn uh spokesperson said, this is two degrees above the pre 1990 average. So it's a massive change in Ireland in a relatively short period of time. Now, if it were a once off, uh I might say, well, okay. But there's a few things that that tell us that the fingerprints here are different. So for example, we bring Reached 30 degrees centigrade in Ireland in June, in July, and in August. Now we've breached 30 degrees before MAT, but we have never done it in three consecutive months. So that tells us that the thermostat is going up, temperatures are rising. Now, of course, we're very fortunate here because our uh our climate continues to be dominated by our proximity to the North Atlantic Ocean.
That has is having the effect of giving us a temperate climate. Now our our immediate neighbours in Britain are not so lucky. They have routinely had temperatures in the mid to high thirties in southeast England, thirty-eight degrees I believe in London. Uh they also, as you know, breach forty back in two thousand and two or sorry, twenty twenty-two. They're likely to do it again. Move move a little bit further down to France, you're looking at temperatures uh in the in well into the forties. So that's the issue. We're we're at the edge of this heat.
Yeah, I know and we are and I get back, but isn't that also one of the contradictions in that we have been told in recent decades that for environmental reasons well they were better off living in cities rather than having people spread throughout the countryside. But the actual cities get an awful lot hotter than the countryside and coastal areas.
Sure. I mean there they're they're slightly different issues. Uh what you're describing there is is what's called the urban heat island effect. This, of course, uh arises from the fact that say substances like concrete, uh, they they act as a kind of heat traps. They they soak incoming heat and then blast it back at you.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:48
2
How much hotter was Ireland’s summer compared to the long‑term average?
0:48–4:39
3
Why are nighttime temperatures rising faster than daytime highs in Ireland?
4:39–14:04
4
What is the urban heat‑island effect and how does it affect Irish cities?
14:04–20:03
Speakers
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