After the severe drought of 2018, and with soils slow to recover from large deficits, Ireland saw above average rainfall across much of the country especially affecting the harvest season and through the second half of the year. The south east was the slowest to recover from drought with below average rainfall, until December, suppressing soil moisture recovery .  Despite the above average rainfall elsewhere the temperatures were also above average again over much of the country with February a ...

Conference theme: ‘Sustainable Diets & Equitable Food Systems in a Changing Climate’ October 23rd 2019, Dept. of Foreign Affairs, Iveagh House Through the forum there was an expressed feeling that climate change reversal is not possible without agricultural change. There are socio-economic co-benefits from developing joint research on the climate impacts of maintaining current food systems versus sustainable food systems and it is believed that there is not enough being considered by c...

By kind introduction from John Hogan Farm manager at Teagasc Oak Park Met Éireann recently had the pleasure of contributing to a 50th anniversary book for the Irish Tillage and Land Use Society (ILTUS) which was launched on the 20th of June 2019. From the Met Éireann perspective the focus was on the milestones of the past 50 years of weather and how it has affected tillage and land use, and while fresh in the memories of the struggles of 2018's drought, a look ahead to what the next 50 years mig...

Science is playing an ever growing role in effective and efficient agricultural practices, Ireland is well known for its favourable growing climate and weather forecast data is increasingly being utilized for, among other things, grass growth modelling. While having previously researched the advantages in forecast model data to predict grass growth, McDonnell et.al have taken the next step observing forecast models performance on perennial ryegrass growth at four nitrogen fertiliser applicati...

Workshop on state-of the-art climate reanalysis dataset Met Éireann will hold a workshop on May 2nd on an exciting climate reanalysis dataset that has uses in any application that requires climate observation data. The workshop will be held in the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin Dublin and will include three keynote talks by European experts as well as presentations on topics such as predicting bathing water quality, atmospheric rivers and flooding in Ireland, the Beast from the East, Sto...

Teagasc Ashtown will host a half day seminar exploring the pilers of sustainability,( economic, environmental, social and innovation) for farming into the future.  From the sustainability challenge to biodiversity, Teagasc economists, using activity data derived from the Teagasc National Farm Survey (NFS) along side research from natural and social science literature, will explore a sustainability metrics to aid the farming community navigate the future of sustainable farming. Places are limi...

Wrapping up the winter, February prove to be a very warm month, over half of the weather stations recording record February temperatures, with drier that average conditions everywhere except the far west and south west of the country. Overall this was an extension of the trend set through the early winter months with temperatures averaging 1.3°C to 2.1°C above seasonal averages across the country, breaking records at many of our stations. Drier conditions were reported through the winter mont...

In our changing world energy efficiency, security and reducing the reliance on fossil fuels are paramount to navigate the future of dairying. This seminar aims to look at the problem and discuss innovative solutions and available support. The seminar will be held in Teagasc, Ashtown, Dublin 15 on the 22 February 2019 starting at 10am A link to the event registration can be found here  Link to the Agenda

How good are the ECMWF models at forecasting the probability of warmer than average conditions, such as the heatwave that gripped Europe this summer? Extended range forecasts have been a difficult product to put much faith in, as a forecast extends out in time there is a tendency towards chaos, however in recent years with growing computing power and understanding the ability to gather useful information from medium range forecasts has increased. The ability to gain confidence in a forecas...

The most up to date report on Climate Change has been released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Special Report on Global warming of 1.5°C, which was commissioned under the Paris Climate Change Agreement, examines projected climate change, potential impacts and associated risks of a human induced warming world. There is a growing focus on two sides of agriculture impacts, global crop yields due to the impacts of climate change and the impact of agricultural emiss...