made heavy storm downpours that caused devastating flooding across Ireland and the UK between last October and March “about 20 per cent more intense”, leading climate scientists have found., highlights how floods in this period had cascading effects on the population, impacting health and food production and adding to the cost of living.
They looked at the period from October to March, traditionally the peak of the storm season. To identify the stormiest days, the researchers used the storm severity index , a metric that considers strong winds and the size of the affected area. For these days, they analysed wind speed and rainfall. However, in today’s climate, with 1.2 degrees of warming, similarly intense storm rainfall is expected to occur “about once every five years”, they found.
Climate change also had a strong influence on autumn and winter rainfall totals, which led to agricultural impacts. In the cooler, pre-industrial climate, wet periods such as that seen between last October and March occurred at most once every 80 years. But in today’s climate they have become at least four times more likely, expected to occur about once every 20 years.
While storms are well forecast in this part of Europe, they led to severe impacts across the two countries late last year and earlier this year. Storms Babet, Ciarán and Debi hit the UK and Ireland in less than a month, meaning some communities were reeling from one storm when the next hit. “Over the recent autumn-winter period we have witnessed the impact that heavy or prolonged rainfall has had on our communities, our land and the farming and agricultural sector, waterlogging the soils with virtually no time for them to dry out and become usable,” she said. “The insights that we gain from studies like this are important to help us plan for the future, to support adaptation and mitigation strategies for an already changing climate.