{"id":633427,"date":"2026-09-23T11:32:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T11:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/633427\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T11:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T11:32:13","slug":"climate-change-worsened-irelands-july-drought-conditions-new-research-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/633427\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate change worsened Ireland&#8217;s July drought conditions, new research suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CLIMATE CHANGE HAS made extreme July conditions eight times more likely, a new study from Maynooth University has found.<\/p>\n<p>This July was Ireland\u2019s driest July on record, with the country getting less than one-fifth of its average rain levels for the month.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Out of the 25 weather stations that Met \u00c9ireann has set up around Ireland, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/how-heatwave-drought-affect-land-grass-ireland-satellite-images-compare-7124337-Aug2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">20 recorded \u2018absolute droughts\u2019 in July<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; a period of 15 or more days in a row with no more than 0.2mm of rain on any single day.<\/p>\n<p>A group of researchers from Maynooth looked at potential evapotranspiration (PET) \u2013 the atmosphere\u2019s capacity to remove moisture from the earth \u2013 and found that though the lack of rainfall caused dry conditions, high temperatures increased dryness by increasing PET.<\/p>\n<p>The new study, which was supported by researchers at Met \u00c9ireann and Teagasc, under the umbrella of the WASITUS project, found that human-caused global warming made extreme July PET about eight times more likely.<\/p>\n<p>It found that extremely dry Julys are actually becoming less common, but when they do occur, they are expected to bring even less rainfall.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe evidence indicates that it was the PET which exacerbated the effects of the low rainfall conditions and therefore exacerbated the drought conditions experienced across Ireland in July 2026. In general, drying in July is being driven by rising temperatures, which leads to more evaporation, rather than changes in precipitation,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n<p>It found that future summers are set to become warmer,\u00a0not just during the day but also at night.<\/p>\n<p>Farmers have already said the intense heat and low rainfall of the summer has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/grocery-prices-to-increase-drought-summer-ireland-farming-7127399-Aug2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">increased production costs and reduced harvest yields<\/a>. However, the report says that farmers must not treat this summer as a \u201cone-off\u201d and start planning for these changing weather conditions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIreland\u2019s agriculture sector is highly dependent on expected weather conditions. As global temperatures continue to rise, we expect soils to become increasingly dry during the warm summer months,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat, historically, has been seen as unusually dry soil conditions will become increasingly common under further global warming, and it is important that farmers start to plan for such an eventuality rather than seeing the past summer as a one-off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLIMATE CHANGE HAS made extreme July conditions eight times more likely, a new study from Maynooth University has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3810,2885,68212,268956,847,61,60,1191,43],"class_list":["post-633427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-agriculture","tag-climate-change","tag-drought","tag-dry-july","tag-global-warming","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-met-eireann","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}