Latest Climate Change reports
Research 483: Just Resilience and Adaptation in Ireland (JustAdapt)
Authors: Stefano Ceolotto, Niall Farrell, Pranav Kakkar and Anita Vollmer, April 2025
Year: 2025
Both the impacts of climate change and the policy responses to mitigate emissions affect different sections of society in different ways. The JustAdapt research project is the first national-level study to consider socioeconomic vulnerability alongside climate change impacts at a local level in Ireland. It includes modelling extreme weather events to identify where climate impacts and socioeconomic vulnerability coincide, assessing local economic impacts of climate policies, and developing guidelines for incorporating nature-based solutions, equity and justice into climate policy decision-making. Overall, the research offers policymakers, planners, and stakeholders’ insights to design fair, effective, and sustainable climate adaptation policies and strategies, while considering socio-economic vulnerabilities and promoting nature-based solutions for a resilient future.
Research 481: Addressing the Political Economic Barriers to Climate Adaptation in Ireland
Authors: Alice Brawley-Chesworth, Darren Clarke and Danny Marks, March 2025
Year: 2025
Ireland’s climate is experiencing significant changes that impact the economy, society, and environment. Historically, Ireland’s climate policies have prioritised reducing emissions over adapting to unavoidable climate impacts. With climate-related costs projected to reach billions of euros annually by 2050, this research assesses how current governance structures support or hinder adaptation. Using an innovative political economy approach, the research sought to uncover the interests, incentives, and institutional factors that shape adaptation decisions in the key sectors of agriculture, flood risk management, and water services. The research indicates that political, economic, and social factors hinder Ireland's climate adaptation progress. Barriers include a perceived lack of urgency and the competition between adaptation and immediate short-term priorities. This report provides a roadmap for policymakers, sector leaders, and communities to strengthen adaptation efforts.
Research 471: Updated High-resolution Climate Projections for Ireland
Authors: Paul Nolan, March 2025
Year: 2025
Climate change poses significant risks to Ireland’s economy, society and environment. To enable appropriate mitigation and adaptation measure into the future, it is imperative that planners and policymakers are informed about future climate change projections. Addressing knowledge gaps in regional climate projections, this research used scenario-based projections (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5) to simulate the future climate in Ireland (up to the year 2100). It used the most up-to-date regional climate models at a higher resolution (4 km grid spacing). Broadly in agreement with previous research, this research projects increases in temperature and heatwaves, decreases in frost and snow, increases in both dry and heavy rainfall events, less wind and longer growing seasons among many other things. The research provides Ireland with data to explore its future climate and enables an assessment of impacts across sectors, at regional and local levels.
Research 476: Quantification of the Area of Land Burned and Habitats Affected by Wildfires in Ireland, 2015–2021, and the Resulting Emissions
Authors: Fiona Cawkwell, Emma Chalençon, Ned Dwyer, Clara Felberbauer, Stig Hellebust, Beatriz Martin, Thedmer Postma, Guy Serbin and Dean Venables, February 2025
Year: 2025
The atmospheric emissions and loss of biodiversity arising from wildfires in Ireland are poorly understood. In an Irish context, wildfires are uncontrolled fires in vegetation in the countryside or a wilderness area. This research, from the FLARES project, developed an automated methodology that allows the aftermath of wildfires to be mapped, and emissions to be estimated more accurately using factors determined specifically for Irish vegetation species, in this case gorse, heather and purple moor grass. Using earth observation techniques, the research highlights that burned areas were significantly larger than previously estimated and identifies that up to half of the area burned each year lies within designated protected areas. This mapping approach can be used for historical images, as well as those acquired by current and future sensors. It shows that the efficacy of measures taken to reduce the incidence of fire events can also be evaluated.
2023 Climate Research Highlights
The National Environmental Coordination Group (NERCG) supports and promotes coordination and knowledge exchange between state bodies involved in funding Environmental research in Ireland., December 2024
Year: 2024
This report has been prepared by the EPA on behalf of the NERCG to highlight climate and climate-related funding by the members for the previous year.
Research 465: Diversification of Dairy and Beef Production for Climate-smart Agriculture
Authors: Maria Markiewicz-Keszycka, Paul Hynds, Donal O’Brien, Maeve Henchion and Áine Macken-Walsh, October 2024
Year: 2024
New agricultural practices are needed to meet EU carbon reduction targets and avoid penalties for not reaching these targets. Reporting under the Habitats Directive also suggests that, overall, farming has a negative impact on nature and biodiversity, particularly on intensive farms. Climate change and biodiversity loss are expected to have far-reaching market, economic, business and policy impacts on the agricultural sector. This research desk study sought to develop recommendations for the pro-environmental diversification of dairy and beef farms by conducting a best practice literature review, interviews with innovative farmers, a national farmers survey and modelling the environmental impact of diversification scenarios. The research provides suggestions and solutions for key policy actors and stakeholders that address the challenge of designing environmental schemes that are efficient for nature, help address climate commitments and are economically attractive for farmers.
Research 464: ClimAg: Multifactorial Causes of Fodder Crises in Ireland and Risks due to Climate Change
Authors: Nithiya Streethran, Kieran Hickey, Astrid Wingler and Paul Leahy, October 2024
Year: 2024
Ireland’s temperate climate favours almost year-round grass growth, which has supported the development of a successful pasture-based farming system. However, this has been threatened by repeated severe shortfalls in fodder stocks, with resulting impacts on yields, revenues, and animal welfare. Grass growth may be influenced by a number of factors, including droughts, heat stress and other drivers, which can lead to the emergence of a fodder crisis. This research identified the key drivers of historic fodder crises, and investigated whether such events will become more or less frequent or severe under the climatic changes projected for Ireland. An impact-based five-level fodder crisis severity index has also been designed to classify fodder crisis events. The research recommends the need for measures to avoid the emergence of multi-annual events, these include increases in stored fodder provision, early warning systems and earlier closure in autumn to help growth recovery in spring.
Research 460: SoMoSAT – Soil Moisture Estimates from Satellite-based Earth Observations
Authors: Rowan Fealy, Tim McCarthy, Rafale De Andrade Moral, Ajay Sathiyan Nair, Dazhi Li, Kazeem Ishola, Reamonn Fealy and Lilian O’Sullivan, September 2024
Year: 2024
Soil moisture interactions for climate, and their relevance for understanding hydrological, agricultural and ecological processes are recognised and acknowledged as important. Nonetheless, there is a paucity of soil water observations globally. Even at the regional and country scale, only limited observations are available. This research uses machine learning with remote sensing data and data from deployed in-situ soil moisture sensors to derive a harmonised soil moisture product for Ireland. Based on independent tests of the models it was found to largely reproduce the available soil moisture measurements. A key output from the research was the deployment of a number of in situ soil moisture sensors, which will support a national initiative to deploy an integrated network of soil moisture sensors across Ireland. The research highlights the need for an integrated monitoring infrastructure to facilitate consistently measuring soil moisture in Ireland.
Research 459: Roadside Emissions in Dublin: Measurements and Projections (REDMAP)
Authors: Srinath Mahesh, Adam Clarke, Ben Fowler, Rebecca Rose, Aonghus McNabola, William Smith, David Timoney, Jasmine Wareham, Paul Willis and Bidisha Ghosh, September 2024
Year: 2024
In Ireland, transport accounts for about 20% of emissions, and 95.8% of these emissions are caused by on-road vehicles. Although several pieces of legislation and policies have been developed to tackle this issue the impact of these in reducing emissions have been lower than originally anticipated. A key challenge is the discrepancy between vehicle type approval tests and real-world emissions from vehicles powered by fossil fuels. This research addresses a knowledge gap about trends in the emission factors of vehicles that conform to different emission standards, use varying fuel types and have high mileage. Real-world measurement techniques were used to quantify emissions from over 130,000 vehicles, including cars, light goods vehicles, heavy goods vehicles and buses. Integrating the data into a dispersion model helped established a more accurate representation of air pollution levels in Dublin. It recommends low emission zones, vehicle restrictions and phasing out older vehicles.
Research 457: Towards a Climate-neutral Land Sector by 2050 Scenarios Quantifying Land-Use & Emissions Transitions Towards Equilibrium with Removals (SeQUEsTER)
Authors: David Styles, Colm Duffy, Remi Prudhomme, George Bishop, Mary Ryan and Cathal O’Donoghue, June 2024
Year: 2024
Ireland’s agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector accounts over 40% of national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2021 commits Ireland to reach a legally binding target of net-zero GHG emissions by 2050, yet emissions from this sector continues to rise. Globally, it is assumed that land management will provide a net carbon sink to offset residual emissions from agriculture and other sectors. However, Ireland’s land sector is a large net emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) owing to large areas of drained organic soils and low afforestation rates relative to forest harvest rates. SeQUEsTER uniquely applied a back-casting approach to identify what “solutions” to net zero could look like for the agriculture and land sector.
Research 454: Farm-Carbon: Hedgerows and Non-forest Woodland (Hedgerow Carbon Project)
Authors: Lilian O’Sullivan, Gary Lanigan, Daire Ó hUallacháin, Shiva Rahimi-Tanha and Kevin Black, March 2024
Year: 2024
The EU aims to be climate neutral by 2050. Central to this ambition is land management that supports carbon sequestration, and enhancement of carbon sinks or the reversal of their emissions. Current national greenhouse gas emission inventory submissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change show that the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector is a net source of emissions in Ireland. However, emissions and removals are not currently disaggregated in national emission inventory estimates. Currently, hedgerows are not explicitly accounted for in national inventory reports.
Research 453: HydroPredict: Ensemble River Flow Scenarios for Climate Change Adaptation
Authors: Conor Murphy and Hadush Meresa, March 2024
Year: 2024
Higher greenhouse gas emissions are associated with large reductions in average summer and annual low flows in rivers. Changes in meteorological droughts in Ireland are driven by a transition to wetter winters and drier summers, together with increased evapotranspiration losses during summer and late spring months, leading to more frequent spring and summer droughts. The magnitude of future drought changes depends on future greenhouse gas emissions, with the most substantial changes found for higher emissions. Adapting to climate change in the water sector should place an increased emphasis on addressing the changing nature of droughts, especially across sensitive sectors. Using the latest climate models and emissions storylines, this research project assessed the projected impacts of climate change on flow conditions and droughts across 37 river catchments in Ireland.
Research 450: Infrastructure Climate Change Risk Considering Interdependencies and Cascading Hazards
Authors: Ilaria Bernardini, Mark Tucker, Moreno Stellini and Emmanouil Kakouris, February 2024
Year: 2024
Extreme weather events such as storms, landslides, river floods and coastal phenomena have threatened and damaged many different regions across Ireland. These events, while rare and often short-lived, can have a devastating impact on critical infrastructure systems. As a result of climate change, these events are becoming more frequent and more intense, affecting not only physical infrastructure but also the environment and society as a whole. Using risk-based approaches in assessing the impacts of extreme weather events and climate change is a well-established method of identifying the most vulnerable infrastructure, assessing the risks posed to that infrastructure and developing strategies to minimise those risks. This report presents an overarching risk assessment methodology for assessing risks posed to critical infrastructure by climate change.
2022 Climate Research Highlights
The Climate Research Coordination Group (CRCG) supports and promotes coordination and knowledge exchange between state bodies involved in funding climate research in Ireland., February 2024
Year: 2024
This report has been prepared by the EPA on behalf of the Climate Research Coordination Group
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Research 449: Transboundary Climate Risks for the Island of Ireland (TCRII)
Authors: Conor Murphy, Kevin Leonard, Rory Moore and Stephen Flood, February 2024
Year: 2024
The island of Ireland is one of the most open economies in the world for trade and finance. While Ireland’s open economy, trade and finance links have helped to generate significant wealth and improve living standards, this also makes Ireland among the most vulnerable to climate change’s impacts on international trade. Transboundary Climate Risks (TCRs) cross national borders and are associated with the impacts of climate change. The Transboundary Climate Risks for the Island of Ireland (TCRII) project undertook a literature review and worked with stakeholders to identify approaches for the assessment of TCRs and synergies that can be leveraged on an all-island basis. The findings informed recommendations for better accounting for these emerging risks, to realise the national climate objective of achieving a climate-resilient economy and society by 2050.
Research 429: Building Coastal and Marine Resilience in Ireland
Authors: Eugene J. Farrell, Glen Smith, Anne Marie O’Hagan and Martin Le Tissier, February 2023
Year: 2023
The identification and increased awareness of climate change risks to Ireland’s coastal communities highlights the importance of building national resilience across socio-ecological and economic systems. This research investigated barriers to the environmental and socio-economic resilience of two coastal communities: Maharees, County Kerry, and Youghal, County Cork.
Research 425: Connecting People to Climate Change Action: Informing Participatory Frameworks for the National Dialogue on Climate Action (C-CHANGE)
Authors: Marguerite Nyhan, Barry O'Dwyer and Yairen Jerez Columbié, October 2022
Year: 2022
Ireland has committed to achieving a net-zero and climate-neutral economy by 2050. The C-CHANGE project is focused on developing solutions and provides guidance on facilitating stakeholders’ and citizens’ participation in environmental and climate dialogues and thus in climate action nationally and internationally. The research outputs provide clear and flexible guidelines that can be adapted to different contexts, sectors and audiences by practitioners, researchers and authorities.
Climate Research Coordination Group: Fourth Report on Activities: January - December 2021
This report has been prepared by the EPA on behalf of the Climate Research Coordination Group, September 2022
Year: 2022
This fourth report presents a summary of the Climate Research Coordination Group’s activities in 2021.
Research 422: Soil Organic Carbon and Land Use Mapping (SOLUM)
Authors: Matthew Saunders, Gabriela Mihaela Afrasinei, Jesko Zimmerman, Alina Premrov, Kevin Black and Stuart Green, September 2022
Year: 2022
Soils contain more than twice the amount of carbon held in the atmosphere, but globally approximately 1600 million tonnes of carbon are lost from the soil each year due to cultivation and land use. This research highlights how large geospatial datasets can provide an excellent source of land use information and can detect land use change events at both national and regional scales. The rule-based land use and soil inventory coupled with the soil cluster approach developed in this work could be implemented in current national land use mapping activities to enhance our ability to assess the impacts of land use and land use change on soil carbon stocks.
Research 419: Enhancing Integration of Disaster Risk and Climate Change Adaptation into Irish Emergency Planning
Authors: Peter Medway, Dug Cubie and Martin Le Tissier, August 2022
Year: 2022
Climate research tells us that extreme weather events will become more frequent and severe. Climate change adaptation (CCA) focuses on the probable chronic long-term impacts likely to occur across multiple sectors. In contrast, emergency planning and disaster risk reduction (DRR) primarily aims to address acute short-term impacts. The project identifies how existing approaches to disaster risk reduction, disaster risk management (DRM) and CCA in Ireland are juxtaposed and concludes that identifying ways to promote coordination and align incentives, priorities and planning processes will facilitate a more holistic and comprehensive approach to DRM at all levels of government.