Volume 3 covers the impacts we are likely to face and how we can prepare for these changes in an Irish context. It incorporates the latest projections from Ireland-specific climate modelling initiatives from ICHEC and Met Éireann, as well as impacts-modelling and social research into community resilience and wellbeing. The report covers a range of sectors, including biodiversity, critical infrastructure, health, and pays attention to the co-dependencies between them. It looks at a broad spectrum of research undertaken in Ireland on climate impacts, while also covering best practices in the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report and the international literature.
The report provides knowledge on research and policy gaps in Ireland, on cross-cutting issues and concepts framing adaptation in Ireland, and on the practical steps required to build community involvement and participation in order to deliver a more climate-resilient Ireland. It, therefore, builds on the fundamental science basis covered in Volume 1, covering a very broad range of disciplines and topics, including the co-benefits and synergies with carbon neutrality measures addressed in Volume 2 and concepts such as transformative adaptation and just transitions further explored in Volume 4.
Prof Conor Murphy is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Maynooth University. His research interests are interdisciplinary and focus on Hydroclimatology, Historical Climatology and Adaptation to climate change. Conor sits on the National Climate Change Adaptation Committee and has acted as expert reviewer for reports on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Dr Paul Nolan is Climate Science Programme Manager at ICHEC / NUIG and principal investigator on EPA ICCA along with Conor Murphy. He is currently managing research projects in the areas of regional and global climate modeling. One project involved developing the EC-Earth Earth System Model (ESM) in preparation for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) contributions. CMIP6 provides a framework for coordinated climate change experiments for the next number of years and includes simulations for assessment in the IPCC AR6 reports. A second component of Paul’s research involves downscaling the CMIP5&6 data to provide high-resolution regional climate projections for Europe (12km) and Ireland (~3.8km) using both standard atmosphere and coupled atmosphere-ocean-wave regional climate models. This body of research has contributed to numerous governmental climate change policy reports, peer reviewed publications and a number of high-impact Met Éireann and EPA climate change reports. Paul is currently working with Met Éireann to develop and improve the EC-Earth ESM and provide more accurate projections of the North Atlantic and Irish climate. This research will contribute to the development of the next version of EC-Earth in preparation for CMIP7, which in turn will inform the next round of IPCC AR7 reports.
Dr Tara Quinn is an environmental social scientist researcher working at Maynooth University on ICCA and on projects focused on adaptation and resilience in climate action. Tara has worked on national and international projects studying: the consequences of environmental change on health; on multi-scale adaptation in coastal areas and is currently worked on an EPA funded project on resilience and transformation in Irish climate action. Tara is also a principal climate change scientist with the UK’s Health Security Agency.
Dr Liam Heaphy (Research Fellow, ICHEC) works with Paul Nolan on EPA ICCA and is a specialist on planning and the built environment, climate modelling for policy, and climate policy-making. Prior to working on Volume 3, he was also a Gov. of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy in UCD, where he led a project on rural planning and housing that sought to analyse recent trends in rural dispersed housing. His doctoral thesis analysed how planning decisions on climate adaptation were co-shaped by climate science with a special emphasis on the future urban climate of cities, based on the UK’s probabilistic projections and the case study cities of London and Manchester. He has completed postdocs on smart urbanism and digital methods for pedagogy in Maynooth University and Sciences Po Paris respectively. He now works for the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) who are the key partner in Ireland (along with Met Éireann) who provide supercomputing resources, climate projections, and climate services for Ireland and Europe.
In addition to contributions from a broad spectrum of external experts, we also have author contributions from Dr Enda O'Brien (ICHEC), Dr Stephen Flood (Maynooth University & EPA), and from members of the Volume 1 team, Dr Deirdre McClean (Edinburgh University) and Dr Danielle Gallagher (TCD).
