Rediscovering forgotten hazards: Irish droughts from 300 years of rainfall records & newspaper archi
LOCATION
4 NORTH BAILEY
Durham City DH1 3ET
SPEAKER | Dr. Conor Murphy, Maynooth Univeristy, Eire.
ABSTRACT | “Irish drought” might appear to be an oxymoron. However, the Island of Ireland has been surprisingly drought prone over the last three centuries. Recent work on data rescue and homogenisation has established an Island of Ireland precipitation network (1850-present) and facilitated the development of a continuous monthly rainfall series from 1711 to present. This presentation will describe these new datasets and provide an overview of the perspectives they afford on historic drought. The results show that Ireland is drought prone but recent decades are unrepresentative of the longer-term drought climatology. Finally, the paper will illustrate how these new datasets are underpinning water planning and how ongoing work is attempting to further refine the insights gained from this work.
SPEAKER | Dr. Conor Murphy, Maynooth Univeristy, Eire.
ABSTRACT | “Irish drought” might appear to be an oxymoron. However, the Island of Ireland has been surprisingly drought prone over the last three centuries. Recent work on data rescue and homogenisation has established an Island of Ireland precipitation network (1850-present) and facilitated the development of a continuous monthly rainfall series from 1711 to present. This presentation will describe these new datasets and provide an overview of the perspectives they afford on historic drought. The results show that Ireland is drought prone but recent decades are unrepresentative of the longer-term drought climatology. Finally, the paper will illustrate how these new datasets are underpinning water planning and how ongoing work is attempting to further refine the insights gained from this work.