TRANSLATE2: Extension of national climate projections for Ireland. Challenges of messaging under large uncertainty.

Near-surface wind speed has the potential to produce large societal and economic impacts in Ireland, due to its position on the western edge of Europe. Extreme winds associated with storms can cause damage and danger to lives, properties, businesses and infrastructure. Meanwhile the wind energy sector relies on steady wind speeds to maintain supply of electricity to the grid and to ensure wind farms remain economically viable. Therefore, the provision of climate projection data in this area is of importance for future planning and climate-informed decision-making. 

TRANSLATE was a research project that was funded and led by Met Éireann, the Irish National Meteorological Service. One of the key objectives of the project was to provide a standardised and bias-corrected ensemble of climate projections for Ireland that could be used consistently by policymakers in different sectors in Ireland. The first iteration of the project focused on the primary variables of temperature and precipitation, using regional climate model (RCM) output based on CMIP5 global projections.  The ensemble combined data from both the Euro-CORDEX set of climate simulations (12km grid spacing) and a smaller ensemble of high-resolution (4km) RCMs that were run over Ireland by colleagues in the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC). These datasets were widely used by government agencies to develop their latest Sectoral Adaptation Plans. 

The second phase of the project (TRANSLATE2) focused on extending the dataset to include additional variables: global shortwave radiation, 10m wind speed and 2m relative humidity. We will discuss the core findings from this phase of the project. This will also include the challenges that arose in communicating the project’s outputs, where the ensemble median changes (relative to baseline) are often small while the uncertainty is large. Finally, we will discuss the future work that will take place as the project moves into its third iteration, with plans to incorporate CMIP6/7 data when it becomes available.