Future projections

In the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS), NUI Maynooth, (http://icarus.nuim.ie) climate change scenarios were generated for three different time periods of this century: the 2020s (2010 – 2039);   the 2050s (2040 – 2069) and the 2080s (2070 to 2099).  

The output of Global Climate Models (GCMs) has a horizontal resolution of between 250 and 600 km. This scale is too coarse for assessing the impact of climate change at a local level. In the diagram below (which gives an indication of the scale at which GCMs operate), Ireland is represented by just two grid squares. This is of little use to policy makers and researchers who employ data with a much finer geographical scale (e.g., to assess the future flow regime of a river, or the future distribution of an endemic species with a small geographical range) so some sort of downscaling is employed. Two plausible methods of downscaling are dynamical downscaling and statistical downscaling. In ICARUS statistical downscaling was employed to generate future climate change data for Ireland.