We only get the weather right 80% of the time
Climate change making it diff icult
IRISH weather is notoriously unpredictable, even for the professional forecasters and meteorologists at Met Éireann, who have admitted that they are right about 80% of the time.
This week many people expected the entire country to be blanketed in snow, as some forecasts had predicted. But many parts of the island, including the capital, escaped with little more than a flurry.
The head of Met Éireann has said that climate change is making it more difficult to predict the weather with accuracy.
Director, Eoin Moran said: ‘In general, modelled projections show the Irish climate is trending towards a reduction in overall rainfall, particularly in spring and summer, along with more heavy rainfall events in autumn and winter. ‘Heatwaves and droughts are becoming more probable and all seasons will be warmer with more hot days and fewer frosts. The overall number of storms affecting Ireland is likely to decrease. The number of extreme damaging storms, however, could increase.’ Last May, Met Éireann implemented an updated weather forecasting system, which improved the prediction of large-scale phenomena. A Met Éireann spokesperson told the MoS this week: ‘Forecasts are generally more than 80% accurate, with summer weather more predictable than winter weather.’
But the weather remains one of the well-established Irish obsessions.
From Jean Byrne’s outfits, Gerald Fleming’s wink, to the amount of ‘Hellos’ Martin King squeezes into his bulletin, the weather is part of the national consciousness.
‘Irish people have an amazing appetite for the weather, perhaps more so than other north European countries which have similarly unpredictable patterns,’ Dr Pádraig Murphy of Dublin City University told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘It’s also due to our national psyche, as Irish people have a tendency to be both outgoing and shy. The weather has always been not only a conversation starter, but a great convenient conversation filler.’
Dr Murphy, programme chair in Science and Health Communication at DCU, delivered a talk, titled: ‘Grand Day For It’, which centred on how weather forecasters can occupy a more important role than they, or even the public, often believe.
‘More extreme storms’