The Meteorological Service of Ireland

Evelyn Murphy, Meteorologist

Biography – Evelyn Murphy

•Worked initially as a weather forecaster (general and marine) and broadcaster on Irish public service Radio and Television,

•Headed up the Marine Unit

•Spell as Head of Training

•Currently Customer Relations Manager

Email: evelyn.murphy@met.ie

The population of Ireland:- 4.5 million people.

GDP or Gross Domestic Product:- €168 Billion in 2014Although approx. 22% of this is repatriated to the home countries of foreign multinationals.

GDP composition by sector Agriculture: 1.6%, (barley, potatoes, wheat, beef, dairy products)Industry: 27%, (pharmaceuticals, chemicals, computer hardware and software, food products, beverages and brewing; medical devices)Services: 71.4%

Main Climate and weather-related hazards: Flooding - Due to rainfall (localised flooding, river overflow and groundwater flooding) – leading to disruption to transport, home and business flooding, crop and animal loss, dam overtopping, collapsed bridges etc.

Long periods of below-zero temperatures - Damage to buildings and infrastructure, disruption to transport of goods, services and people.

Wind storms – Damage to buildings; loss of electricity and communications.

Sea ingress and high onshore waves - leading to disruption of maritime activities, affecting livelihood of fishers, disruption to Ferry schedules, loss of life of shore fishers, occasional severe coastal flooding)

Background information on Met Éireann

Met Eireann is the meteorological service of Ireland, operating a full suite of programmes and services to WMO and ICAO standards.

Number of staff: 165

Annual budget €19.5M

Divided as follows:-

A.Observing Systems = €6MB.Forecasting = €4.5MC.Climatology = €1.5MD.Tech Support = €2ME.Admin = €1.5MF.External bodies e.g. WMO, ECMWF, EUMETSAT, EUMETNET etc = €4M

Range of Products

Build and operate our own automatic land weather observation stations;Co-operate in the running of a marine network of offshore buoys.Monitor solar and terrestrial radiation, seismic activity, geo-magnetic / declination, lightning detection and ozone detection.

Services provided to:

oAviationoAgriculture oGeneral Public oMarineoNational Utilities oNational Road network Research section – using the Hirlam and Harmonie models for localised NWP

Climatology section – generating monthly, annual and decadal means, extremes etc.

Climate change research – in collaboration with EC-Earth

Organisation Strength:

Public Warnings

Organisation Weakness:

Agriculture.

Funding:

Almost completely Government funded although we access EU funding from time to time to support our climate change research.

Expectations from this workshop

I would like to be able to facilitate socioeconomic benefit studies of

1) all Met Éireann forecasts to the general public 2) all services of Met Éireann to Government Bodies.

including designing a scoping/concept note preparing the scope of the work commissioning the study communicating the results

Estimate of Climate and Weather related damages in Ireland

Estimated annual costs for flooding – in the order of €171M - €195M

The most recent wind storm including, sea ingress repair costs were in the order of €42M, to Government. The costs to private dwellers/insurance Companies was extra – approx €46M – costs to uninsured private dwellers unknown.

Costs to Insurance Companies from recent Irish severe weather events were as shown below: