Given the current global climate situation, this year could be Ireland’s warmest year on record, with this year potentially surpassing 2023, Met Eireann said.
Ireland’s average annual temperature has exceeded 11 degrees Celsius for the first time, official figures released this week show.
This is almost 1.5 degrees above the long-term average. 21 of Met Eireann’s 25 synoptic stations had their warmest year on record, 24 stations had their highest average minimum temperature (average of monthly minimum temperatures), and 19 stations had their warmest year on record. The maximum temperature (average of maximum temperatures for each month) was the highest. ).
This is in line with last year’s highest global temperatures on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and other organizations around the world. The average global temperature is expected to be 1.4 degrees higher than the pre-industrial revolution (before 1900) average, exceeding the previous warmest year in 2016.
The highest temperature in Ireland was 28.8 degrees Celsius on June 13th at Oak Park in County Carlow, and the lowest temperature was -7.0 degrees Celsius at Mt Dillon on January 17th last year.
It is also likely to rank among the top 10 wettest years since national records began in 1940.
It was the heaviest rainfall at Dublin Airport since 2002 and the heaviest at Athenry since records began 12 years ago. It was also the wettest year since 2009 for Valentia, Co. Kerry and Cork Airport.
Met Eireann climatologist Paul Moore said the world was likely to get hotter due to El Nino. El Niño is a global phenomenon in the southern hemisphere in which the trade winds blowing from east to west reverse, sending large amounts of warm air into the atmosphere. . El Niño years are warmer than usual.
He predicted that El Niño’s effects would continue at least through the first half of this year. “A strong El Niño will occur in 2023, but the delayed effects will last for several months afterwards,” he explained.
Another phenomenon that will continue into the new year is sea temperatures in the North Atlantic, which have remained several degrees above normal since last April.
These are partly responsible for the wet weather and recent busy season of storms in northern Europe.
“Research shows that when storms occur in our current climate, they can become stronger and produce more rain. Warmer ocean temperatures mean more moisture in the atmosphere, which in this case means more rain. of rainfall could occur,” he explained.
Compared to 2022/23, there were particularly many storm seasons (September to September). “We have missed many strong storms so far, but this season we are already dealing with Storm H,” he said.
If El Niño disrupts the jet stream, temperatures could drop even colder in January or February, but “the warm water temperatures make that difficult to achieve right now.”
The Met Office said last year was provisionally the second warmest in Britain since records began in 1884.
Only 2022 was hotter, when temperatures exceeded 40 degrees for the first time in recorded history.
Wales and Northern Ireland have had their warmest year yet, and the Met Office said climate change made it “likely that these benchmarks would rise significantly”.
For Northern Ireland, the year was the warmest in the series dating back to 1884, the third wettest in the series dating back to 1836, and the wettest since 2002. It was also the year when
The Japan Meteorological Agency said it expects the pattern of high temperature records to continue for years to come as a result of human-induced climate change.
Last year, heatwaves occurred in June and September, and temperatures in 2023 will be above average in eight of the 12 months.
Both Northern Ireland and Wales are currently experiencing back-to-back warmest years on record, with 2023 surpassing the previous record set in 2022.
The Met Office for Northern Ireland provisionally recorded around 1,399.0mm of rainfall, which is 21% above average.
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