Ireland on course for ‘dangerous’ climate change

IRELAND faces increasingly destructive flooding and summer droughts as a result of global warming, according to a new report.

The study, commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is expected to predict that Ireland will warm by more than two degrees by 2050.

A rise of two degrees is considered by the United Nations as the cut-off point after which climate change becomes “dangerous” climate change.

“The two degree threshold has been accepted by the European Council as an indicator of where the world gets to, possibly a tipping point, in terms of climate change,” said report author Dr John Sweeney, of Maynooth University.

“It is accepted as a definition by Europe of what the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change describes as dangerous climate change and the importance of two degrees is that it is possibly a level at which many natural systems will not be able to adjust and adjust back normally if we go beyond that value.”

Dr Sweeney, an expert in Ireland on climate change, told RTÉ he believed Ireland would go beyond the two degree limit by 2050.

His report, entitled Dangerous Climate Change, predicts the impact such a temperature rise will have on Ireland:

* Winter rainfall could increase by 17%.

* Summer rainfall could fall by 25%.

* Water resources could be affected, triggering drought.

* Higher sea levels and storm surges could lead to increasingly destructive flooding.

The report said areas such as Shannon would be most affected. Shannon Airport could lose its runway, while the nearby energy plants of Moneypoint and Tarbert would be in danger.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that further carbon emissions will heat up the world between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees.

Dr Sweeney said that it was also possible the international models may in fact be “under-predicting” the scale and speed of the impact of global warming.

Pat Finnegan, of the Greenhouse Ireland Action Network, said there was a 40% chance Ireland would go beyond the two degree point well before the mid-century.

George Monbiot, author of the newly published book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, said Ireland needed to cut its carbon emissions by 90% to prevent breaching the two degree threshold. Ireland is 12% above its Kyoto target for carbon dioxide emissions.