Climate change responsible for the wettest February in years, expert says

Vivienne Clarke

The strategic lead in the European Centre with the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Samantha Burgess has said that climate change was responsible for the wettest February in years.

“A more southerly jet stream and then a number of atmospheric rivers coming across the Atlantic really drove those storm tracks leading to that record amount of rainfall in many locations,” she told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.

Parts of the southeast of Ireland, France and the Iberian peninsula were also heavily hit, Burgess added.

There were a number of factors which led to the heavy rainfall, including the fact that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so it rains more intensely, and because the polar jet has moved further south.

It was not unusual to have storms in February, but there had been seven or eight in a row.

That frequency of storms, with record amounts of precipitation, meant that the ground was “super saturated” and so could not absorb the rainfall, she explained.

Temperatures had fluctuated throughout February, she said.

It had been one of the coldest Februarys in the past 14 years for Europe, with much colder averages in Scandinavia, up to three to five degrees colder than average.