Met Éireann said that given the current global climate situation, this year could be Ireland’s warmest year on record, surpassing 2023.
Ireland’s average annual temperature exceeded 11C for the first time last year, according to official figures to be released this week.
This is almost 1.5 degrees above the long-term average. It was the warmest year on record for his 25 synoptic stations at Met Eireen, his 21 of the official observatories where weather records are taken. 24 regions had the highest average minimum temperature (the average of the minimum temperatures for each month), and 19 regions had the highest average maximum temperature (the average of the maximum temperatures for each month).
This is consistent with last year’s global temperatures also being the highest 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.
Last year’s highest temperature in Ireland was 28.8 degrees Celsius on June 13th at Oak Park in County Carlow, and the lowest temperature was -7 degrees Celsius at Mount Dillon on January 17th.
2023 is likely to rank in the top 10 wettest years since records began being kept nationwide in 1940. It was the wettest year for Dublin Airport since 2002 and the wettest year for Athenry since records began 12 years ago. It was also the wettest year since 2009 for Valencia, 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 rising sea temperatures in the North Atlantic, which have remained several degrees above normal since April last year.
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.
The start of this year’s storm season, which runs from September to September, has been particularly busy compared to 2022/23. “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.”
Last year was tentatively the second warmest on record for Britain since records began in 1884, according to the Met Office.
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 Met Office said it expected the pattern of record high temperatures 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 has provisionally recorded approximately 1,399mm of rainfall in Northern Ireland. – 21% more than average. Additional Report – PA
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