Met Éireann’s Climate Services Division yesterday received the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage RÉALTA Award in category of ‘Climate Action and Sustainable Government’, for its work on the TRANSLATE initiative.
Focussing on excellence and innovation, the RÉALTA Awards (Recognising Excellence and Local Team Achievement; Réalta being the Irish word for stars) celebrate staff achievements and showcase innovations in policy and service delivery.
Department of Housing, Local Government & Heritage Secretary General, Graham Doyle, presents the RÉALTA Award to Met Éireann Meteorologist and TRANSLATE project lead, Dr Claire Scannell, alongside Meteorologist, Dr Patrick Fournet (left), and Head of Climate Services Division, Keith Lambkin (right).
Met Éireann Meteorologist and TRANSLATE project lead, Dr Claire Scannell was on hand to receive the award, one of several presented during an official ceremony at the Custom House in Dublin, which will be one of five projects that will go forward to represent the Department at the National Civil Service Excellence and Innovation Awards (CSEIAs) later this year.
Aimed at standardising climate projections for Ireland and developing methods to use these projections to deliver climate services for Ireland, the TRANSLATE project was launched by the Climate Services Division in 2023, with the support of the Research and Applications Division.
The initiative brings together the breath of Ireland’s climate change information expertise, through its project team and steering committee, made up of scientists and leading experts from within Met Éireann, as well as from the University of Galway, Irish Centre for High End Computing, SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine and University College Cork.
TRANSLATE represents a step change in future climate information for Ireland by taking the latest available climate projections and tailoring them to the Irish context to improve their confidence, accuracy and robustness, and combining them into one accessible and easy-to-use high-resolution national resource.
The TRANSLATE project is already being used across Ireland, in both public and private sectors, to support climate policy, climate planning, climate decision making and climate action, and was one of the feature topics presented at last week’s inaugural National Framework for Climate Services (NFCS) Workshop.
Speaking upon the announcement of the award, Met Éireann Head of Climate Services Division, Keith Lambkin paid thanks to the various Met Éireann teams that have supported the initiative, including the Observations, Forecast, Flood Forecast, Technology and Business Operations Divisions and well as the many external partners helping to support and enhance the use of standardised climate information here in Ireland.
For more information on Met Éireann’s TRANSLATE project check out the project’s webpage here.