Ireland will 'have to get used' to more extreme weather events, says climatologist

Vivienne Clarke

Climatologist Professor John Sweeney has warned that Ireland “will have to get used to” extreme weather events like the flooding experienced in parts of Cork last week.

Prof. Sweeney told Newstalk Breakfast that all extreme weather events have the “fingerprint, however small” of climate change on them and Storm Babet was no different.

“We know that this particular storm, however, developed in the very warm waters off the coast of Portugal. We’ve been having a marine heatwave most of the summer and autumn, so it was developing in waters which were one to two degrees Celsius warmer than usual.

“That means it could hold a lot more water vapours, so it’s arriving on our shores supercharged, and it’s that really which, I think, is pointing to the climate change dimension as being instrumental in making the event more extreme as the residents of Midleton would no doubt testify.”

There was no doubt that floods like those in Cork last week would happen again because Ireland’s climate was changing.

“It’s something I think we’ll have to get used to.

"It’s the kind of event we’re going to see more frequently and perhaps even to a greater severity in the years ahead as the air warms and as the surrounding waters are warm.

“In that sense, it’s something that we’re going to have to pay the price for. We’re simply going to have to think about adaptation and protection of people in exposed and vulnerable locations.

“We are looking at very large amounts of taxpayers money. I know that to build a seawall, for example, costs per kilometre roughly the same to build a motorway. So, we are facing hard choices.”