Climate change in Ireland‐ recent trends in temperature and precipitation

McElwain, Laura; Sweeney, John

doi:10.1080/00750770309555815

Cited by 30 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Our conclusions here are broadly in accordance with those of McElwain and Sweeney (2003), which were based on data from a number of sites in Ireland over a shorter period since 1890.…”

Section: Seasonal Meanssupporting

confidence: 81%

Air temperatures at Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland, from 1796 to 2002

Butler

Suarez

Coughlin

et al. 2005

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Three independent mean temperature series for Armagh Observatory, covering the period 1796-2002 have been calibrated and corrected for the time of reading and exposure. Agreement between the three series is good in regions of overlap. With a short gap in the Armagh data from 1825 to 1833 filled by data from two stations in Dublin, the resulting series is the longest for the island of Ireland and one of the longest for any single site in the British Isles.Over the past 207 years, we note that temperatures in Armagh, in all seasons, show a gradual overall trend upwards. However, there are seasonal differences: summer and spring temperatures have increased by only half as much as those in autumn and winter. This is partly due to the exceptionally cold winters and autumns experienced prior to 1820. Relative to the overall trend, warm periods occurred in Ireland, as in other parts of Europe, in the mid-19th century, in the mid-20th century and at the end of the 20th century. Relatively cool temperatures prevailed in the early 19th century, in the 1880s and in the 1970s. Thus, if the baseline against which current temperatures are compared were moved from the late 19th century to include the earlier warm period, the apparent warming at the end of the late 20th century would be correspondingly reduced.A gradual decline in the daily temperature range at Armagh since 1844 may have resulted from higher minimum temperatures associated with increased cloudiness.A 7.8 year periodicity is identified in winter and spring mean temperatures at Armagh, which is probably a consequence of the North Atlantic oscillation.

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“…Our conclusions here are broadly in accordance with those of McElwain and Sweeney (2003), which were based on data from a number of sites in Ireland over a shorter period since 1890.…”

Section: Seasonal Meanssupporting

confidence: 81%

Air temperatures at Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland, from 1796 to 2002

Butler

Suarez

Coughlin

et al. 2005

Intl Journal of Climatology

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“…It has been shown that air temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, wind velocity and relative humidity are all positively correlated to NAO index values (Jennings et al 2000). This mode of natural variability is most prevalent during the winter months (McElwain and Sweeney 2003), and inter-decadal change is exhibited on irregular timescales (Hurrell 1995, Hurrell andDeser 2009). NAO variability and its influence on winter climate in Irish long-term records have been previously investigated Sweeney 2007, Galvin et al 2011).…”

Section: Temperature Context For Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Current trends in Irish temperature closely follow global patterns, with numerous studies having focused on climate amelioration at the beginning of the twentieth century and the accelerated warming since the 1990s (Vincent and Gullet 1999, Zhai and Ren 1999, McElwain and Sweeney 2003, 2007. Two main warm intervals have been widely acknowledged in Irish climate literature: 1910Á1945 and 1978Ápresent (McElwain and Sweeney 2003.…”

Section: Temperature Context For Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the late nineteenth century warming has received little attention, it is important to establish a longer baseline against which present and future warming can be compared (Butler et al 2005). To date, studies have shown that winter warming accounts for most of the recent Irish warming (Jones and Moberg 2003), with maximum temperatures accounting for the majority of this change (Sweeney et al 2002, McElwain andSweeney 2003). However, it has also been widely confirmed that the majority of warming in the other three seasons is driven by minimum temperatures increasing at around twice the rate of maximum temperatures (Vincent and Gullet 1999, Zhai and Ren 1999, McElwain and Sweeney 2007, possibly due to increasing cloud cover (Kiely et al 2007).…”

Section: Temperature Context For Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Donnelly et al (2004), an understanding of climate at the regional and local scale is imperative to adequately examine potential impacts of future climate change. Although a number of studies have examined fluctuations at a regional Irish scale (Butler 1994, Sweeney et al 2002, McElwain and Sweeney 2003, 2007, Butler et al 2005, geographic coverage of Ireland is not complete. This paper presents an analysis of a previously unexplored temperature record from Markree Observatory located in County Sligo in the northwest of Ireland.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The long-term temperature record from Markree Observatory, County Sligo, from 1842 to 2011

2012

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Validation of simulated precipitation patterns over Ireland for the period 1961–2000

et al. 2006

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The Rotated Empirical Orthogonal Function (REOF) method was used to analyse the annual and interannual variability of the precipitation patterns over Ireland as simulated by the Rossby Centre Regional Climate Model Version 2 (RCA2) for the period 1961-2000. The annual and monthly precipitation results show that the model captures the major spatial pattern of each month, but the simulation shows a larger percentage of the variance explained by the leading spatial pattern and tends to have a less pronounced seasonal cycle compared to the observations. The simulation for the wet winter season is in slightly better agreement with the observations compared with the drier summer season. Spatial analysis of the monthly precipitation over a 40-year period shows two major patterns. The first, showing a precipitation maximum in the southwest, is well simulated; the second, showing a maximum in the west and northwest, shows a strongly increasing trend, which is slightly underestimated in the model simulation. Both patterns show seasonal and interannual variability. The wavelet energy density analysis shows that the interannual variability is more important than the seasonal one. In general, the model captures the major spatial and seasonal patterns observed between 1961 and 2000 but slightly overestimates monthly average precipitation levels.

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Climate change in Ireland‐ recent trends in temperature and precipitation

Cited by 30 publications

References 23 publications

Air temperatures at Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland, from 1796 to 2002

Air temperatures at Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland, from 1796 to 2002

The long-term temperature record from Markree Observatory, County Sligo, from 1842 to 2011

Validation of simulated precipitation patterns over Ireland for the period 1961–2000

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