Latest Climate Change reports

in: Research
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Research 402: Climate Change Adaptation: Risks and Opportunities for Irish Businesses

Authors: Karen Deignan, Aideen O’Hora, Orlaith Delargy, Laura Heuston and Conor Morrow, February 2022

Year: 2022

Climate change is already affecting Irish businesses and these impacts are likely to increase in severity. Our research identified material climate risks (pressures) for Ireland’s private sector. By raising awareness of climate risks and opportunities, this research can help the private sector identify and develop solutions to address the environmental and economic challenges that they face. This project can also inform the development of solutions to develop business-level (rather than sector-level) resilience and adaptation plans.

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Research 401: Peatland Properties Influencing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removal

Authors: Florence Renou-Wilson, Kenneth A. Byrne, Raymond Flynn, Alina Premrov, Emily Riondato, Matthew Saunders, Killian Walz and David Wilson, January 2022

Year: 2022

Irish bogs have been drastically altered by human activities and the sampled peat properties reflect the nature and magnitude of the impact of land use and management. A recognition of the heterogeneity found across Irish peat soils, together with an understanding of the relationships between key soil properties, are critical for developing effective strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of these degraded ecosystems. Our findings clearly support the need for a site-by-site approach for rewetting management schemes.

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Research 398: Eco-driving: Trends and Potential Impacts for Irish Heavy-duty Vehicles

Authors: Ajinkya S. Mane and Bidisha Ghosh, December 2021

Year: 2021

The “Eco-HDV” research project evaluated the impacts of adaptation of eco-driving programmes in the Irish heavy-duty vehicle fleet, focusing especially on the freight sector. The research identified perceptions and awareness of eco-driving training, reviewed the best eco-driving practices and analysed the possibilities of adaptation of eco-driving programmes. The project generated guidelines for the implementation of eco-driving programmes and other measures to reduce vehicular emissions from the Irish heavy-duty vehicle fleet.

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Research 397: Framework for Achieving the Environmental Sustainable Development Goals

Authors: Enda Murphy, Patrick Paul Walsh and Aparajita Banerjee, December 2021

Year: 2021

This report contributes to a range of international and national policy areas, creating a positive feedback loop between policies for environmental SDG promotion, governance for the SDGs and integrated environmental policymaking. It provides an important evidence base for assessing national progress on the environmental SDGs relative to EU peer nations. This is the first time that Ireland’s progress on the SDGs has been assessed on an SDG target and indicator basis relative to peer nations.

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Research 386: The Status of Ireland’s Climate, 2020

Editors and Lead Authors: Walther C.A. Cámaro García and Ned Dwyer, August 2021

Year: 2021

As an island on the western boundary of Europe facing the Atlantic Ocean, Ireland is ideally positioned to measure and assess ongoing climate change. The first Status of Ireland’s Climate report was published in 2013. This second status report provides an update, incorporating new datasets and analyses as well as reporting ongoing climate observations over the last 7 years.

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Research 384: ClimAtt: Tools for Climate Change Attribution of Extreme Weather Events

Authors: Paul Leahy, Lucía Hermida Gonzalez, Kieran Hickey, Gerard Kiely, Myles Allen, Parvaneh Nowbakht and Adam Pasik, July 2021

Year: 2021

Extreme weather events, such as heavy or prolonged rainfall events, droughts and heatwaves, have the potential to cause significant social and economic disruption in Ireland. The ClimAtt project has examined the state of the art in climate change attribution of extreme weather events. Met Éireann’s observational records have been used to test and validate several climate model datasets for attribution purposes. The most appropriate datasets and methods to use to investigate the influence of climate change on extreme weather events occurring in Ireland have been recommended.

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Climate Research Coordination Group: Third Report on Activities: January - December 2020

This report has been prepared by the EPA on behalf of the Climate Research Coordination Group, July 2021

Year: 2021

This third report presents a summary of the Climate Research Coordination Group’s activities in 2020.

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Research 379: Policy Coherence in Adaptation Studies: Selecting and Using Indicators of Climate Resilience

Authors: Stephen Flood, Ned Dwyer and Jeremy Gault, June 2021

Year: 2021

Adaptation action is now urgently needed to reduce the social, economic and environmental impacts of present and future climate change to ensure resilience to both extreme and slow-onset events under a changing climate. This project combines an analysis of international best practice and approaches to the development of climate adaptation indicators, co-designed by key stakeholder representatives from relevant state agencies and regional and national government, to identify a tailored suite of Ireland-relevant climate adaptation indicators. The co-design process identified a suite of 127 recommended indicators – 15 are climatological indicators, 23 are impact indicators, 32 are implementation indicators and 21 are outcome indicators. Ninety-one of these indicators were identified as priority.

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Research 371: Climate Change and Land Use in Ireland

Author: Eamon Haughey, May 2021

Year: 2021

Land supports a range of ecosystem services including biodiversity and economic outputs in the agriculture and forestry sectors. This report identified pressures in the land system by analysing land use and outputs and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the land system. It identifies knowledge gaps in relation to national land use mapping, which currently limit the potential for regional analyses of land–climate interactions.

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Research 369: CIViC: Critical Infrastructure Vulnerability to Climate Change

Authors: Páraic C. Ryan, Lara Hawchar, Owen Naughton and Mark G. Stewart, March 2021

Year: 2021

Modern society relies on the effective functioning of critical infrastructure networks to provide public services, enhance quality of life and spur sustainable economic development. Part A of this report presents a framework and analysis aimed at identifying potential risks for the four main critical infrastructure sectors. Part B of the report was applied to part of the energy sector as an illustrative case study.

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Research 367: Particulate Matter from Diesel Vehicles: Emissions and Exposure

Authors: Meabh Gallagher, Bidroha Basu, Bidisha Ghosh, Md. Saniul Alam, Laurence Gill, BalzKamber and Aonghus McNabola, February 2021

Year: 2021

Research was conducted to assess the contribution of diesel vehicle emissions to the concentrations of PM2.5 in Dublin. The major source identified was solid fuel burning, contributing 46-50% of the total mass recorded. The 2nd largest contributor at a roadside site was diesel vehicle emissions (22%) followed closely by road dust (19%). The 2nd largest source at a suburban site was soil (20%) followed closely by sea spray (14%).

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Research 365: Developing Ireland’s Greenhouse Gas and Transboundary Air Pollution Monitoring Network

Authors: Damien Martin and Colin O’Dowd, January 2021

Year: 2021

The Atmospheric Composition and Climate Change (AC3) network is an established national research and monitoring infrastructure developed incrementally. It monitors greenhouse gases, short-lived climate forcers, and aerosol chemical and physical characteristics in line with best practice from pan-European and global monitoring programmes. This fellowship has enabled and sustained scientific operations for a national monitoring network.

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Research 362: Evaluating Ireland’s Climate Policy Performance

Authors: Sabrina Dekker and Diarmuid Torney, January 2021

Year: 2021

To date, Ireland’s climate change policy response has not delivered sufficient progress. The central objectives of this project were to construct a policy evaluation framework that builds on a standard EU evaluation framework and to undertake evaluations of climate change policies across all sectors using the framework, with a specific focus on key policies.

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Research 360: Methodologies for Financing and Costing of Climate Impacts and Future Adaptation Actions: Transport Networks in Ireland

Authors: Julie Clarke, Enrique Acosta and Heidi Brede, January 2021

Year: 2021

Climate change is happening on a global scale, and Ireland is seeing its detrimental effects. Increased stress owing to changing weather patterns and extreme storm events is and will have an impact on the transport infrastructure network. Developing resilient methodologies that quantify the social, economic and environmental costs of climate change impacts can support a decision-making framework and provide cost effective solutions.

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Research 357: Ireland’s Atmospheric Composition and Climate Change Network

Authors: Damien Martin and Colin O’Dowd, November 2020

Year: 2020

The Atmospheric Composition and Climate Change network is a valuable established national research and monitoring infrastructure. This fellowship has enabled and sustained scientific work on a national monitoring network. Infrastructure has been continually developed over the course of the fellowship that will facilitate long-term sustainable measurements.

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Research 352: Synthesis of Literature and Preliminary Modelling Relevant to Society-wide Scenarios for Effective Climate Change Mitigation in Ireland

Authors: Barry McMullin and Paul Price, November 2020

Year: 2020

Rapid global warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) caused by human activities is negatively affecting global climate and ecological systems. This research assesses the international literature to inform climate mitigation policy in Ireland and provides a preliminary tool for comparing policy within the Paris Agreement commitments.

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Research 354: IE-NETs: Investigating the Potential for Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) in Ireland

Authors: Barry McMullin, Michael B. Jones, Paul R. Price, Alwynne McGeever and Paul Rice, November 2020

Year: 2020

It is now scientifically understood that effective climate action sets a finite limit on total future net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from human activities, and may require dependence on large-scale “negative emissions” or CO₂ removal from the atmosphere. The IE-NETs project provides the first review of the technical potential for CO₂ removal in Ireland and an assessment of the security of long-term carbon storage.

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Research 350: Towards a Definitive Historical High-resolution Climate Dataset for Ireland – Promoting Climate Research in Ireland

Authors: Jason Flanagan and Paul Nolan, October 2020

Year: 2020

There is strong and constant demand from various sectors for long-term, high-resolution gridded climate datasets. This report describes the available datasets and how, using a variety of available observational datasets, appropriate uncertainty estimates and skill scores have been calculated for the model outputs.

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Research 349: Develop a LEAP GHG Ireland Analytical Tool for 2050

Authors: Tomás Mac Uidhir, Fionn Rogan and Brian Ó Gallachóir, October 2020

Year: 2020

This report describes a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions model of Ireland’s energy and agriculture sectors, which were responsible for approximately 61 million tonnes (Mt) of GHG emissions in 2017. The Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP) software was used to build the LEAP Ireland 2050 model, which simulates the development of future possible decarbonisation pathways for Ireland.

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Research 346: National Risk Assessment of Impacts of Climate Change: Bridging the Gap to Adaptation Action

Authors: Stephen Flood, Shona Paterson, Ellen O’Connor, Barry O’Dwyer, Hester Whyte, Martin LeTissier and Jeremy Gault, October 2020

Year: 2020

Ireland’s climate is changing in line with global trends and this trend is expected to continue. This report presents its findings according to the NAF’s four themes: natural and cultural capital, critical infrastructure, water resources and flood risk management, and public health. The impacts of climate change will have direct relevance to the achievement of planning and development objectives and priorities within these themes.

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