Climate Change in Ireland

Prof. Brendan Walsh's recent Irish Economy blog post has encouraged me to investigate the issue of climate change myself. The major drawback of Prof. Walsh's data is that it only extends back as far as 1958. Therefore, it is hard to tell what the long-term trends are in the Irish climate. Fortunately, I have been able to access long-term Irish weather statistics – available from the UK Met Office. I examined the monthly time-series from Armagh. This data includes information on max/min temperatures, rainfall and sunlight and extends back as far as 1853.

So what does this data tell us? Firstly, I investigated the extreme (max and min) temperature changes. A panel regression (month FE) of temperature on a quadratic year trend shows that both the maximum and minimum temperatures have increased. The coefficients of these regressions have t-stats of around 5, so we can say these are statistically significant. Similar trends appear in the sunlight data. Interestingly, there is no significant trend in the rainfall statistics.

So what does this mean? Of course there are many dynamics to climate change – this post has simply addressed the issue concerning whether or not the climate in Ireland has changed from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. Longer term trends and causality were not analyzed. However, I couldn't resist the opportunity to project these trends. The figure below shows my projections up until 2200. The data would suggest that if these current trends continue, Ireland will continue to become warmer. The figure below also shows a separate max estimator for July, which predicts that Ireland will have the same max temperature as the Bahamas does currently in the year 2153. Taking the increased sunshine and the possibility of rising sea levels into account – I am very hopeful that I can bequeath my great great great great grandchildren a lovely beach house in Tallaght.