The best news I heard recently was that the Gulf Stream is weakening. Irresponsible? Perhaps. It gives us our temperate climate – which means rain, rain and more rain. Who needs all the “wet” we suffered this year?
It wasn’t even possible to get a breath of fresh air without being drowned to the bone, prolonging that relentless cough that just wouldn’t go away. Pleurisy here we come!
With the Gulf Stream gone we would have a similar climate to places on the same latitude such as Edmonton, Newfoundland, and parts of Hudson Bay in Canada; southern Alaska; southern Sweden (including Malmö) and southern Norway. Cooler [in every sense] but, above all, drier.
As we are close to the sea and on the west side of Europe, it would be more accurate to compare our probable future climate to neighbours to the north, in southern Sweden and Norway.
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In Malmo, for example, a city in the far south of Sweden where the climate is described as “Baltic” but not as we know it [the word]. It has cold winters and mild summers. Average temperatures remain above freezing in winter, while the average summer temperature is about 18 degrees, with a minimum of 14 degrees and a maximum of 23 degrees. Very liveable for any Irish person.
However, what makes it even more bearable is that average annual rainfall there is 615mm, ranging from 30mm in April to 70mm in the wettest month, August.
Rainfall in Ireland averaged 1,156.89mm annually between 1901 and 2024, reaching an all-time high of 1,453.76mm in 2002. Need I say more?
Starting last January, measurable rainfall here was recorded over 46 consecutive days at Valentia observatory in Kerry. February last set records in Dublin, with 250 per cent average rainfall recorded at the Phoenix Park and a 255 per cent of average rainfall at Dublin Airport. Malmo, anyone?
Let’s look at western Newfoundland, which is not influenced by the Gulf Stream. Its summers are mild to warm, particularly in western lowland valleys, which can see summer temperatures near 30 degrees. Winters have average daily temperatures below freezing for roughly four months. And average rainfall is 900-1,200mm.
Who’s afraid of losing the Gulf Steam?
Climate, from Latin clima, Greek klima, for ’region, zone, slope of the earth’
