The south and east of the country have been identified as areas that will experience the most dramatic effects of global warming with temperature increases of three to four degrees by the end of the century. Today, Environment Minister John Gormley will unveil a scientific report that has plotted the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming on the Irish environment. The report, Ireland in a Warmer World: Scientific Predictions of the Irish
Climate in the 21st Century, states that our climate will continue to warm up, particularly in the summer and autumn seasons. The changing climate could have far-reaching consequences for agriculture and domestic water supplies.

It comes just days after the Irish Examiner uncovered a Department of Finance private briefing paper that doubted the Government’s ability to meet climate change targets set by the National Climate Change Strategy, 2007-2012.

That same paper also questioned the Government’s ability to achieve more stringent targets set by the EU for 2020. Yesterday, Energy Minister Eamon Ryan called on the financial sector to play a large role in addressing climate change and energy security issues.

“It is clear that if we are to have a robust and long-term scheme for dealing with climate change, we must work in tandem with the financial community. It is no coincidence that finance is one of the four building blocks outlined in the Bali Action Plan, which will hopefully lead to a global climate agreement in 2009,” he said.

“If governments are to reach climate change and carbon emissions targets, the assistance and input of the financial community is required,” said Mr Ryan in an address to a seminar organised by the Irish Banking Federation.

Today’s report points at possible increases of three to four degrees towards the end of the century with the greatest warming happening in the south and east of the country.

According to Met Éireann, last month was the warmest May on record in most places. Mean air temperatures for May were above normal everywhere and were more than three degrees higher than normal in western areas.

The projections in the latest analysis show that rainfall is expected to increase in winter by about 15% and summer predictions range from no change to a 20% decrease.

The study was conducted by the Community Climate Change Consortium for Ireland, also known as the C4I Project, and was based on extensive studies carried out by Met Éireann and UCD. It describes Ireland’s changing climate and is based on a comprehensive series of computer simulations.

In a global context, 11 of the 12 warmest years since 1850 have occurred in the past 12 years and in line with this picture, today’s report will show that Ireland’s average temperature has increased by about 0.7C over the past 100 years and the rate of increase has been higher in the past couple of decades.

The increase has not been uniform over time, but the current warming period commenced about 1980.

In the past 100 years, 2006 was the second warmest year, 1945 being slightly warmer and the past 10 years have been the warmest decade.

(source:www.irishexaminer.ie June 10^th 2008)