What is ClimAtt?

What is the role of human influence on climate in recent extreme weather events in Ireland?

Recent advances in weather simulation and computing power mean that we can now answer this question with some degree of certainty.

The Environmental Protection Agency-funded “ClimAtt” project at University College Cork and the Environmental Change Institute of Oxford University, seeks to determine the level of human influence on heavy rainfalls, floods, and other extreme weather related events in Ireland.

The devastating flooding which hits Cork, the midlands and the West in November and December 2009, the Shannon floods of Winter 2015/2016 and the Fodder Crisis of 2013 which followed the wet growing season and winter of 2012, are just some examples of extreme weather events which have had a major impact on Ireland.

The ClimAtt project will carry out evidence-based attribution of impacts of extreme weather events to climate change. This will allow, for the first time in Ireland, to analyse the probable anthropogenic climate change contribution to specific types of extreme events to be estimated.

These studies will be necessary for specific, localised climate change adaptation measures to be adopted in government policy, for example in the area of building regulations. At the same time they will make possible for better estimates of the future economic cost of such measures.