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A NEW FLOOD FORECAST centre is set to launch at Met Éireann early next year, the agency’s Head of Forecasting has said in an interview with The Journal.
In the wake of a year of several significant floods around the country due to storms, it’s hoped that the new centre will be able to provide clear information.
In particular, flood forecasters at the centre will be working with local authorities to warn them if it appears likely they will need to take defensive measures, like deploying sandbags or closing roads.
Speaking to The Journal, Met Éireann’s Head of Forecasting Eoin Sherlock said that the centre has been in development for a number of years and should be fully operational by around the end of January or start of February.
“That will mean we’ll have a flood forecast centre providing flood information and guidance to key stakeholders, particularly local authorities and our colleagues in the national directorate for emergency management,” Sherlock said.
Met Éireann has been examining river and coastal models, developing infrastructure, and recruiting staff for the new centre.
“Similar enough to what we have in the weather office, there’ll be hydrometeorologists, or ‘flood forecasters’, issuing guidance and advisories.”
Many parts of the country were hit by severely damaging floods this year, including Cork and Waterford during Storm Babet.
Floods are expected to become more regular and more threatening as climate change worsens.
Overall, Met Éireann expects it will need to issue more Status Orange and Status Red weather warnings as the frequency and intensity extreme weather events increase due to climate change – though adjustments are also being made to the thresholds for weather warnings in line with the changing patterns.
“It’s likely that we’re going to see more of the Oranges, and, heaven forbid, the Reds, because we’re seeing the impacts of extreme weather,” Sherlock explained.
He outlined that weather warnings are tied to a threshold, such as an amount of rain in a particular period of time or how strong a wind will be.
“We have to look at it in terms of the climate. We analysed the climate over the last number of years and so to accurately reflect the changing climate, we’re modifying the thresholds.
One of the changes is an increase to the Yellow wind warning threshold from 50 to 55 kilometres per hour. Another is an increase to the threshold for a Yellow low temperature warning as the number of frost nights declines.
“We’ll be slightly modifying the threshold for a number of meteorological parameters to reflect that the climate has changed.”
Globally, climate records are being broken year on year.
If global average temperatures rise by 1.5 degrees, the world “faces unavoidable multiple climate hazards” in the next 20 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Exceeding a 1.5 degree rise, even temporarily, would lead to “additional severe impacts, some of which will be irreversible”.
Sherlock said that meteorologists in Ireland have observed more and more extreme weather events this year.
“We had periods of drought. We had the hottest June on record and the wettest July on record. We had a marine heatwave as well, which really hasn’t been something we’ve seen in Ireland,” he said.
“This is the first time we’ve had so many storms so early in the in the year. For the first time, we’ve had two named storms on a Saturday and a Sunday – Storm Elin and Storm Fergus. We had Storm Babet with the flooding in Middleton. We had the tornado in Leitrim.
“There’s clear science that our climate is changing. We’re seeing extreme weather events more regularly. This is the way the world is headed, unfortunately, due to the changing climate.
Sherlock said that more days of sunshine will mean people will need to be cautious about how much time they spend in the sun and protect themselves from risks like developing skin cancer.
Additionally, “another thing we have to be careful about is heat impacts on particularly vulnerable people and the elderly”.
“At night, if temperatures don’t go below 18 or 19 degrees, your body doesn’t have an opportunity to cool down and that can be very difficult for elderly people and people who have underlying conditions,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have thought in Ireland that we’d have that, but we’re seeing warmer and warmer temperatures — and we’re seeing more heatwaves.”
Speaking to reporters, Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan said Ireland must “focus on adaptation and protecting ourselves against climate impact, not just trying to reduce emissions”.
“I do think there has been a game-changer in terms of understanding this — that it isn’t just about culverting rivers and concrete embankments and so on, it’s about how you treat the river upstream and how you manage the source of the water and how you hold it back through grassland management, forestry management, peatland restoration, using natural floodplain areas,” he said.
He added: “I think the Office of Public Works are starting to understand that.”
“The work we’re doing on the Land Use Review will help because that has to optimise for so many different things but included in that is managing our water system. It’s not impossible, and it’s often I think as well nature-based solutions as well as the physical works that the OPW will do.”
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Then the Department of Health wonder where all the extra money goes they give hospitals. No accountability whatsoever, time for sweep out all these big, not for purpose entities.
Am i reading this right? One publicly funded agency, HSE, is giving our tax money to another publicly funded entity, UL, to set up a hypothetical private company with public taxes to hire workers who dont receive public benefits and neither the HSE or UL will account for how the money is being spent or why anyone hired should be hired without state benefits since they are being hired with our tax money.
@Ronan Murphy: No doubt Donnelly will soon tell us he is awaiting an external report on this.
The wonderful financial mismanagement of continuous FFG rule.
Another tax please?
@Roy Dowling: Ah that awl chestnut. That’s an easy line to throw out and implies that it’s wages from union agreements that have caused it to spiral. No substance behind that and you shouldn’t throw out lines like that if you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about!….. Do you really think it’s caused the HSE budget to jump from 13.3B in 2012 to 23.5b in 2024?!?! Total pay for the whole HSE in 2022 was 7.2B, of that non-clinical management/admin was €992.5m.
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: I didn’t read it that way, I read it that the strong unions are preventing the removal of useless staff, changes to work practices etc not that the pay was too high.
I work in the public sector and see it there as well with managers and staff refusing to change work practices, refusing to do work delegated and actively sabotaging others work to try and get ahead.
I was surprised the recruitment firm couldn’t give a figure until I read that it’s a “not for profit public sector” recruitment firm. That explains it.
@Tom D: That’s a good one. Not for profit public sector recruitment firm.
@Tom D: well said Tom….” not for profit – say no more!!!
Obscene….. And not even for frontline staff!!!! No wonder the HSE budget has increased by around 10 billion in 12 years with this sort of spending. I’ll bet there’s some serious gouging here because it was a state contract!…… Another inquiry needed!
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: RTE was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the waste and greed of our public sector, especially the management layers.
Hse has rte accounting issues, any chance of an independent audit.
The money was just resting in their accounts
Beyond joke!
Needs a full independent investigation. Employment rights being exploited. HSE and UL need to be held to account
the levels of mismanagement in the crooked Irish system are absolutely breathtaking
it needs to COLLAPSE
As the old saying says: The only place there isn’t a FIDDLE is in a BRASS BAND.
Cheap labour market, no training, paid 13 euros, serious breaches of the temp agency act under equal pay. Placing these agency staff in higher grades but paying the minimum, HSE staff on the panels then can’t access the full-time positions, both UL and uhl guilty of breach of employment rights and law. Another enquiry needed to show the full rot.
@Lourda Finn: Spot on, €14 Million in one particular year for placement of 1500 staff, something very rotten about those figures, someone is creaming it somewhere. The HSE is a corrupt organization, the constant requests for Work Permits for nurses, they have got rid of Irish nurses & are replacing them with cheap agency labour from India. The abuses of monies in the HSE are breathtaking, yet we are paying massive salaries to Stephen Donnelly, Robert Watt & Bernard Gloster, the 3 of them should be fired, along with all senior Executives.
no accountability Ireland, ceo’s, consultants and managers walk off into the sunset, with no consequences for their actions, while the Hse pay out billions in lawsuits during a recruitment freeze, it beggers belief…
Like with 2008 crash then again with the 2020 lockdown the slate should of been be wiped clean and started a fresh. But no our governments just gave a way more. We like a dripping tap needing a 10 cent washer but instead we give out multi million euro bucket contracts and then pay big salaries to a management team to look after them and then another to empty them.
Another scandal another day in Ireland
Yea that would be in keeping with the FFG in government, no shock or surprise, just tax the paye more when you start getting low in the coffers
@N D K: I would vote for any party whose sole policy was total reform of our public services, unfortunately there is no party even mentioning it. Our tax take should allow us to provide excellent services but in most areas they are shambolic (bar revenue of course, who are excellent).
All these public institutions needs to be looked into by a company the same as CAB,but not from Ireland,The Banks,HSE,Local County Councils,The planning department,Justice, civil servants,the parties in power,we need to find out since Trica.this isnt done nothing changes,if people have committed crimes,need to be dealt with the same as us,and if people r caught,they be made pay back,and lose the golden retirement.they know everything about us,when Covid came,in less than 2 weeks the revenue were able to put in place the Covid payment for the worker,if u want to draw stamps, make u wait weeks,if ur disabled,once off need payment,their refusing irish people,I think it’s coz their budget for the year,the foreigners r included in that,eff the Irish
Wow not suprised as HSE all over. Wonder what EX HSE manager is leading this UL company
If these bozos in the public sector ran businesses in the private sector, they be bankrupted after a month
UHL in the news again today for all the wrong reasons.
The midless billions that were and are being wasted by the HSE and the health boards of the past is just cringing to think about
…real money,tax payers money.
….we never really cracked how to run a health sevice
The fact that our population is gone up
50% in 30 years is a major contributing factor….I suppose
This is the new circular economy. HSE dumps a great wad of cash into UL, but they don’t know what, if anything, they might have gotten for it. Don’t ask UL, sure they’re no good with money. But it does enable UL to buy 20 houses for €13 million, despite the real value being €6 million, despite them being designated social housing and despite having no planning approval to be used as student accommodation.
Meanwhile, despite all these new hypothetical admin staff, Limerick hospital ED is like a continuous battle zone and is unfit for patients or the people who have to work there, and even the look of it is like some run-down Eastern block institution.
I love seeing journalists investigating the powerful!
I had this mad idea that that’s what they were supposed to do but when you look at a lot that passes for journalism it’s not there! Good article, keep ‘em coming!
Another UL corruption story. How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Utter madness.the fish rots from the head down.
That is rubbish, they have a payroll accounts system, does anyone know how to count the people on it.
Another RTE…. needs to be a serious inquiry into the goings on at the HSE.
@Steve Davis: in terms of the hse and misbehaviour, mishandling s by them compared to in rte (A politically biased, unethical broadcaster) id say its 200:3 in an approximate ratio. no wait, the hse is probably on 2 000 and rte 3
Time to stop hiring agency staff, and using private sector to fill public jobs, plenty of people in child care, and social care that could make great nurses, if points were reduced here, allowing many more to qualify. And train them like before, nurses don’t need degree courses, they just need empathy and care, and a decent wage. Most hospitals are run by reg staff, it’s a box ticking exercise when you go through A And E. Head injury have a ultrasound,
Break a leg have an ultrasound, crazy.
LOL
H.s.e cowboys couldn’t run a proverbial p—s up in a brewery.
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