Background

TRANSLATE research programme funded, led and supported by Met Éireann aimed at standardising and mainstreaming national climate projections for Ireland across timescales and scenarios and developing climate services to enhance Ireland’s resilience to climate change by supporting the Irish adaptation sector’s and decision maker’s climate information requirements. TRANSLATE is currently in its second cycle (TRANSLATE 2) which runs from August 2023 to August 2025. The program aims to achieve the following objectives:

To develop the highest quality, standardised national climate projection dataset from annual to climate timescales.
To develop scalable and reproducible climate services focused on translating climate information into practice to support effective risk-based decision making under uncertainty.
To enhance the uptake of climate information and climate services for decision making via the effective translation of climate services research.
To enhance the communication across all audiences so society, can better engage with climate change and its associated uncertainty.
To support the National Framework for Climate Services, (NFCS), in strengthening the national climate services community across the researcher – practitioner – policy maker interface.

The TRANSLATE program underpins many essential national and local climate directives. It feeds directly into the National Framework for Climate Services (NFCS) to support climate services development, coordination and standardisation across the country. It underpins projections for Climate Ireland, the national portal for climate adaptation. It is embedded within the National Adaptation Framework (NAF) and the National Climate Change Risk Assessment (NCCRA) and as a result supports local climate action plans and sectoral adaptation plans mandated by Government. It is therefore critical that information and services from the programme remain relevant and robust to ensure policy and decisions are based on the most accurate and up to date climate information, as well as ensuring that decision makers have access to the highest quality climate data when required and consistency across planning cycles.

Output Description

Underpinning Data

TRANSLATE 2 expands the original TRANSLATE CMIP5 based dataset to include additional core variables of wind speed, relative humidity and solar radiation across scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP 8.5) and global warming levels (1.5^oC, 2^oC, 2.5^oC, 3^oC, 4^oC). These are bias corrected with downscaled ERA-Interim reanalysis data as opposed to gridded observations.
TRANSLATE 2 moves from CMIP5 to CMIP6. This initial phase includes a number of downscaled CMIP6 models (including HCLIM). However, due to delays with the development of CMIP6 Euro-CORDEX only the initial members of this ensemble will be available at the end of this phase. The CMIP6 ensemble will be further expanded in later iterations of TRANSLATE.

Climate Indicators

Additional indicators that are being developed based on CMIP5 TRANSLATE ensemble and include: Evapotranspiration, SPEI, Heat Stress, Fire Index and a number of renewable energy indices.
Climate indicators will be reproduced for CMIP6 where appropriate to do so.
All are produced across scenarios and global warming levels and are/will be available in multiple formats from Climate Ireland.

Climate Storylines

Event based climate storylines are currently under production. There are two storylines under consideration:

Extreme rainfall events and how the return periods of specific high impact historical events will change in the future
Summer of 2018 – heat story exploring extreme temperatures, heat stress, heat waves and droughts.

Risk Based Climate Services

Building from the initial phase of the TRANSLATE programme the TRANSLATE qualitative risk framework has been expanded to include additional case studies.
Work on bioclimatic indices and integration of this data into the TRANSLATE risk framework will be undertaken.
The fully quantitative risk framework has been expanded to include a cost benefit component.