Gerald Fleming: Clear thinking needed on climate change

As Met Éireann holds a conference today, Gerald Fleming says the welfare of future generations depends on forming the right answers to challenges of changing the weather.

As Met Éireann holds a conference today, Gerald Fleming says the welfare of future generations depends on forming the right answers to challenges of changing the weather.

Climate change. We hear about it incessantly — as many have said, it’s the greatest challenge facing humankind in this 21st century.

So why another symposium on climate change?

And what is the role of Met Éireann in the national debate around this topic?

For a small nation like Ireland, climate change is an issue with very specific and particular challenges.

One the one hand, we join with our partners in the European Union — which has been a global leader in efforts to mitigate climate change — in ambitious plans to “decarbonise” our economies.

This means figuring out a path to sustainable economic growth while simultaneously we reduce our output of carbon dioxide (CO2), so that levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere stabilise, and eventually decrease.

This is a major challenge for many sectors, but especially transport, energy generation, and agriculture.

On the other hand, it is obvious that other countries around the world are slower to come along this road with Europe.

Not just the US of Donald Trump (where city and state-level initiatives are actually reducing CO2 emissions) but countries in less-developed parts of the world too.

These countries, understandably, aspire to levels of economic growth which we have long enjoyed in western Europe; a growth which we built largely on cheap energy; the exploitation of fossil fuels.

So, while seeking a sustainable model of economic growth which simultaneously reduces our carbon emissions, we must also be realistic and plan for a future in which global levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to rise for some time yet.

This is why Met Éireann has today organised a symposium on Future Weather, Future Challenges. To plan for the future, we need to understand better what climate change will mean for our small nation, perched on the northwest corner of Europe.

How will climate change translate into our experience of weather, and in particular our experience of extreme weather? As we know only too well from recent experience, extreme weather still has the capacity to significantly disrupt our daily activities, our society.

In considering these challenges, we must first of all understand, and be guided by, the best scientific advice available. Meteorology is, by its nature, a truly international endeavour; Met Éireann is actively engaged with a range of European and global scientific bodies.

Met Éireann research scientists contribute to studies whose work is synthesised in the reports of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Its climatologists keep their finger on the pulse of the Irish climate; tracking the changes by updating the weather statistics monthly and annually.

Its forecasters work with colleagues from across Europe and beyond to predict, and to understand better, the impacts of extreme weather events on our society.

These studies look not just to the global scale, but to the regional and local scales also, extracting an understanding of what our future weather patterns across Ireland will look like through the middle, and to the end, of this 21 st century.

In the first session of the symposium Séamus Walsh, head of climatology with Met Éireann, will set the stage by providing an overview of Ireland’s changing climate. John Fitzgerald will consider the likely impacts on society from an economic point of view.

We in Ireland have always had an outward view; in particular, our history of missionary work has given us a keen interest in the developing world. Mary Robinson will address these aspects by looking at future weather through the lens of climate justice.

This justice must be considered not only across countries but across generations; are we bequeathing a tarnished environmental inheritance to our children and grandchildren?

For the second session national and international experts will outline the tremendous advances in the science of meteorology over the past few decades; advances which have enabled Met Éireann to issue increasingly accurate forecasts and warnings, such as those for Storm Ophelia and indeed for the snowfall last weekend.

The final session will focus on weather emergencies, including contributions from Gerry Murphy on the new paradigm of impact-based forecasting, and from Derek Hynes of ESB Networks on how they prepare for, and respond to, extreme weather.

Finally, I myself will consider the contribution which meteorology can make across the whole spectrum of emergency management activities.

The scientific and operational work of National Met Services provides an essential underpinning of the fundamental task of Government; to ensure the safety and security of its citizens. This fundamental task must consider the longer-term challenges as well as the shorter-term threats.

Among those citizens are our children who, in just a couple of weeks, will go bed dreaming of Santa Claus. Those children will come to maturity, start their own families, and in turn become grandparents, in a very different climate, with very different weather patterns.

Today we must think about, and plan for, their future. We must ensure that the long-term decisions we make — on infrastructural investment, on economic and social policies, on the organisation of our public services and utilities — build in and incorporate our scientific understanding of what the future Irish weather will be.

We must do this to safeguard the resilience of our society and our economy — the sustainability of our way of life.

While as a people we will always have more immediate problems demanding our attention, we must not lose sight of those longer-term challenges.

While it will be the task of Government to lay out plans to address these challenges, and to make those larger economic decisions, these can only come to full fruition if they have sufficient support and buy-in from the Irish people.

This, in turn, places an obligation on meteorological scientists to describe and explain what is happening to our weather — so that all parties, from governments to individuals, can understand fully the need for these decisions to be taken in a timely manner, and the implications of them.

It is for this reason that Met Éireann has organised the symposium in the Mansion House today — to bring together disparate voices and perspectives, all of whom have a significant contribution to make to understanding the crucial decisions that confront us.

One thing is certain. Our decisions, as a society, in the context of climate change as well as many other environmental challenges, must be grounded in science, must be informed by the best science available.

For that reason, it is vital that Met Éireann continues to deepen its work on understanding our atmosphere, and its interactions with the oceans, the polar ice, the biosphere and the “anthrosphere” — those parts of our environment that are being modified by human activity.

The task of Met Éireann is to provide guidance on our weather; but now that task encompasses not just our weather for tomorrow, or for next week, but for our future weather, in the next decade, and the next century.

The welfare of our children, and our children’s children, depends on it.

Gerald Fleming is head of forecasting at Met Éireann.