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00:01What can rocks from the past tell us about the world today?
00:05Why are we so resistant to change?
00:08And what can we do to challenge the status quo?
00:11And how do invasive species threaten nature and our way of life?
00:15We'll be looking into all this and more on 10 Things to Know About.
00:19This week we're looking into the eye of the storm and exploring ways we can prepare for more frequent and extreme weather events.
00:35Emma, Darwin, Ophelia, Barra, Charlie, not the ensemble cast of a weird Shakespearean play, but the names of some of Ireland's most destructive storms.
00:58Storm Eowyn, which hit in January 2025, was one of the most violent storms in generations, resulting in extensive power outages that affected hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
01:11On the Galway coast, Mace Head experienced its brute force.
01:15And I'm here to meet Brandon Cray, who was part of the Met Air and team forecasting and tracking the storm as it approached Ireland.
01:23While storms are low pressure systems, they're the same weather systems that we get throughout the whole year.
01:28The reason we have any weather today is because there's a low pressure system at the moment between Ireland and Iceland,
01:33which is directing this westerly flow onto us here in Mace Head.
01:38To deserve a named storm, the winds need to be generally above orange level threshold for a number of counties for a number of hours as well.
01:47Orange warnings are above 65 kilometres means and 115 kilometres gusts.
01:52And Storm Eowyn was one of the biggest ones that we've had in a long time and a lot of people were impacted it.
01:57And Mace Head is where the records were broken. Tell us what happened back in January.
02:02We received mean wind values of up to 142 kilometres an hour here, which is hurricane force, and a gust of up to 184 kilometres an hour.
02:12Which today, it's windy, we're being blown around a little bit, but it's only 33 kilometres mean here.
02:18I can't imagine what 184 must be like here. It's terrifying.
02:23I don't think we would have been able to stand had we been here during Eowyn.
02:26Why was it so strong? What was the science going on in it?
02:29So Storm Eowyn formed initially out far into the Atlantic due to a strong thermal gradient.
02:35So there was really cold air to the north and warmer air to the south.
02:39And that causes circulation, which causes the storm to begin to develop.
02:43As well as that, in the upper atmosphere we have the jet stream moving along,
02:47which is a thin band of really strong moving air.
02:50And once that interacts with the circulation at the surface, you get rapid development.
02:55As well as that, there is a phenomenon called a sting jet phenomenon.
02:59When the jet stream itself manages to fall through the atmosphere slightly due to cold, dry air just behind the storm system.
03:08And the momentum transfer of the jet stream down to the surface is where we get those really strong corridors of air.
03:15And what's that event is called something?
03:17A sting jet.
03:18Sting jet. It sounds dangerous.
03:20And it wasn't just wind. Eowyn created a storm surge that pushed the sea to new heights.
03:38There was recorders of up to two and a half meters in Galway dock during the storm system.
03:43Luckily, though, that coincided with low tide.
03:47At the time, there was small amounts of flooding near car parks in Salt Hill and Galway.
03:52But had it happened during high tide a few hours later,
03:55then there would have been much more devastating flooding in Galway and around the west coast.
04:01To predict the weather, forecasters combine observations from radars, satellites and weather monitoring stations
04:08to build a detailed picture of atmospheric conditions.
04:11They then input this data into supercomputers that run complex equations to simulate how the conditions may change.
04:20The issue with that is the weather is a chaotic system and chaos doesn't necessarily mean that it's unpredictable.
04:25It just means that if there's any small air at the start, then that air can propagate to large air further down the line.
04:32The way that we deal with that as meteorologists is we use what's called ensemble forecasting,
04:37which is when we rerun the forecast with slight differences in those initial conditions
04:42and we see where the different trajectories go.
04:44And once there's enough confidence, enough of those members going for a certain solution,
04:49that's when we issue our warnings.
05:04At its peak, Storm Eowen knocked out of power to over 700,000 customers,
05:09with some remaining without power for weeks.
05:11Infrastructure was damaged and entire forests were destroyed.
05:15So what happens when the next day Eowen hits, in a warmer world?
05:21To understand how future storms might affect Ireland, researchers are analysing data from previous storms,
05:26such as Ophelia, which hit Ireland in 2017.
05:30It was the worst storm to affect Ireland in 50 years.
05:33Met Aeron researcher Tatiana Coquina is re-examining Ophelia with the future in mind.
05:39It was originally a tropical cyclone that originated off west coast of Africa.
05:48And usually those tropical cyclones, they would go westward and hit the Americas.
05:52But sometimes, on rare occasions, they would curve and rear off to the North Europe
05:58and make landfall in Ireland.
06:00And that's exactly what happened to Ophelia.
06:02What I'm trying to do at the moment is I'm trying to figure out how storms such as Ophelia
06:07might happen in the future warmer world.
06:10So first thing I do is I try to recreate Ophelia as it happened.
06:15And then I, bit by bit, heat up the atmosphere and the sea surface
06:20and change the humidity and other parameters that are relevant to storm creation.
06:25Interestingly, the path it took didn't change.
06:29It still stayed on the same track.
06:31However, I do see a deeper and stronger storm with much higher winds and a much lower pressure.
06:38So why does a warmer world mean stronger storms?
06:42Tropical storms feed off and are created from the energy that is passed from the sea surface,
06:49from warm water into the air.
06:52And as long as the sea surface is higher than 26 degrees, you can get a storm.
06:58And the thicker the layer of that warm water is, the more energy the storm can absorb and grow.
07:04And so the fact that we're keeping all this heat trapped in our atmosphere means,
07:08and the ocean is absorbing a huge amount of that.
07:11Heat, yeah.
07:12That's what's driving it. It's like adding fuel to the flame.
07:14It is. This heat from the ocean is the fuel for the tropical storm.
07:18The wild Atlantic coastline on a windy day like this is a spectacular sight to behold.
07:25But storms like Eowyn are a warning, not just of what is possible, but what is coming.
07:31Storms are getting stronger and more frequent.
07:34So it's essential that science keeps pace and helps inform how we adapt and minimize the impacts of extreme weather events.
07:41Forests are a vital part of our lives.
07:58They are timber suppliers, wildlife habitats, the lungs of the planet, and a peaceful place to commune and connect with nature.
08:06But as storms become more frequent and intense, Ireland's forests are taking a battering.
08:14The impacts of Storm Eowyn on Ireland's forests were devastating.
08:18John Sherlock has been a forest owner since his father Pat passed away in 2011.
08:23It's a family farm, so I think we've been here six, seven, eight generations.
08:28My father had developed Parkinson's, so he wanted something that he could be an interest in, but something that wouldn't need physical activity.
08:38The step into this was a step into the unknown for him, because he knew very, very little about foresty or anything to do with it.
08:47So, John, what are we looking at here?
08:50So, this was a plantation that we planted back in 2003.
08:55It was a Norway and Sitges Bruce.
08:59It was completely wiped out in January in the Storm Eowyn.
09:0316 and a half acres flattened in one night.
09:10At the time, I was thinking, is the roof going to blow off the house?
09:15I never actually thought about what was going to happen here.
09:18And that must have been a huge shock to you.
09:20Oh, I couldn't believe it, because it was the one thing I never thought about.
09:24Up until now, we were thinking the risks to our forestry was insects and disease.
09:30Never thought the wind was going to be the one that would do it.
09:35In the aftermath of this unprecedented weather event, forestry advisers like John Casey were instrumental in providing support to impacted forest owners.
09:44Can you give me a sense of the scale of damage that was caused?
09:48So, you're looking at about 26,000 hectares.
09:51That is, the amount of timber that came down would be about two and a half times the annual cut.
09:56The emotional shock for forest owners needs to be acknowledged.
10:01You're looking at people that had invested land, had pension funds, and then suddenly one night it was gone.
10:07Where do storms fit in terms of the different threats that our forests face?
10:11The first threat would probably be climate change in terms of changing temperatures, which are increasing.
10:17You're looking at rainfall patterns that are also being adjusted as well.
10:21So this affects trees.
10:23For some good trees on good land, it will actually make them grow better.
10:27But for other trees, it's going to make them more unstable.
10:30And that then leads into wind, for example.
10:32So wind would probably be the biggest physical threat.
10:34We have endemic wind events, and they're the storms that we have every winter.
10:40So we can plan for those with a catastrophic wind event.
10:44They're a little bit more difficult because, you know, there's very little you can do with a 180 km hour wind.
10:49So can we build forests that can stand up to the storm?
10:55Here in Wexford, researchers like Niall Farrelly are working on that very challenge.
11:00In an arboretum plot here in John F. Kennedy Park, here in County Wexford, this was planted in 1975.
11:08And it displays 80 varieties of Sitka spruce.
11:13And it's used to monitor the performance of the species in Ireland and its adaptation to the environment.
11:20And what type of monitoring are you carrying out here now at the moment?
11:22I'm doing an assessment of soil moisture.
11:24Soil moisture is governed by the characteristics of that soil.
11:27So, for example, here we have a well-drained soil, which is a proportion of balanced clay, sand and silt.
11:34And certain soils where we have a high clay content, it acts as a barrier to actually root penetration towards down into the soil.
11:42And it affects the anchorage of the tree.
11:44So trees don't like to grow into water.
11:48They want to grow into air pockets and air spaces.
11:51And that's where the roots develop. That's where they follow. They follow the air spaces.
11:55This is why this forest, which is 50 years of age, has maintained stability throughout its lifespan.
12:02Whereas other forests may have a barrier to root anchorage caused by high clay content.
12:10To help forest owners prepare for the future, researchers are also looking to create a wind throw early warning system.
12:28Wind throw is caused when the soil beneath tree roots fails to anchor the tree above.
12:33By integrating weather and soil data, a warning system would allow owners to take preventative action, such as felling vulnerable trees, before a storm hits.
12:43We could also come into the forest and pick up characteristic data from the forest, which would indicate whether the forest is vulnerable to blowing down.
12:52So, for example, a forest acts like a bit of a plunger. People are familiar with a plunger. It goes up and down and you try to remove a blockage.
12:59Yes.
13:00These trees will move up and down as well and they will create a plunging effect as they break free of their anchorage.
13:08So, we can start to see that at a stage.
13:11So, with the forest, that's been damaged by a storm. How would that bounce back?
13:15We could look at the different species we're going to replant. We could look at, you know, deploying mixtures, for example,
13:22of tree species that are growing at different rates that basically create a softening of the wind profile.
13:29How do you make your decisions around what you are going to plant and to future-proof against future storms?
13:36I suppose to future-proof anything is going to be a challenge. I've spoken to our forestry advisor and he says,
13:43well, make sure he's a good look at the soil, because that tree might, some of them trees mightn't suit your soil.
13:50But we've come to decision that we're going to plant different species and that, to try and alleviate possible damage.
13:57And if there was a catas, another catastrophic event, be it disease, wind, weather, that possibly not all the trees would be knocked.
14:09Diversity is key, really, in that.
14:11I think diversity. I think so.
14:13The trees were here long before we were. And with the threat of extreme weather and storms on the rise,
14:23we need to ensure that our forests are well-developed, diverse and more resilient,
14:29so that they can continue to protect and sustain us well into the next century.
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15:04Twister, the day after tomorrow, and even Sharknado. While Hollywood has often leaned
15:24into storms as a rich source of drama, our relationship with extreme weather has a long
15:30history in literature, including one particular meteorological maelstrom that's widely considered
15:36to have inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest. Stepping back in time to that of the Bard,
15:43we find the storm that set the scene for the play. It's 1609 and the English ship the Sea Venture
15:50is sailing towards the colony of Jamestown in Virginia. Caught in a hurricane and dragged off
15:57course, the crew spotted the uninhabited island of Bermuda, where the ship was deliberately driven
16:03onto the reefs to prevent it from sinking. The sailors then spent nine months on the island,
16:10building a new ship before eventually returning to England, where their accounts were written,
16:15and according to many scholars, likely read by Shakespeare himself. Because in that same year,
16:22the Tempest was published, which opens with one of the most famous storms in literature,
16:28conjured up by the sorcerer Prospero. In life, as in art, there's nothing like brewing up a storm
16:36for some tragicomedy Troubled Waters. See you next time.
16:53If storms are going to become more intense in the future as the planet heats up, what can we do to
16:59build better coastal resilience? Well, in some places, concrete and walls will be used to keep
17:04the sea out. But elsewhere, Mother Nature can provide natural protection during storms.
17:12I'm on the flat, shallow sands of Dublin Bay to meet Iris Muller, who studies how sand, waves,
17:18wind, and tides interact and shape our coastlines. So Iris, when we talk about storms, we normally
17:24talk about the west coast of Ireland. But how does the east coast fare? Yeah, the east coast is very
17:29different. So we're facing the Irish Sea. We're facing away from the direction from which most of our
17:35winds and storms come, which is the west. So we're actually quite sheltered here, which is a bit
17:41dangerous because it might lull us into a false sense of security. What is protecting the beach here is
17:47what lies seaward of the beach, which is effectively another beach and another beach and another beach.
17:53All of that together offers pretty big protection because as the waves move closer to the shore,
17:59they start to break. And the breaking of the wave is a great mechanism for getting rid of the wave's energy.
18:07The waves that are coming in during a storm from the Irish Sea will start to feel the bed
18:13kilometres out because this is such a big accumulation of sand that gives us this shallow
18:19coastal profile, as we call it. In addition to the flat expanse of sand, nature has created a second
18:27line of storm defence. So what we can see here behind me is what we call a sand spit. It's a coastal
18:35land form. It's an accumulation of coastal sand and materials that forms because the waves have
18:42approached the beach here at an angle. So they've come more from the south than straight from the east.
18:49And in doing that, they've pushed the sand up and up and up and up onto the beach until they didn't have
18:54enough energy to carry any further. And so the sand drops out and gets placed there. And so the spit grows
19:02in the direction in which the waves are pushing the sand along the shore. If the beach wasn't here,
19:09then we would be relying purely on the protection that lies landwards of us, which is a man-made,
19:15human-made structure. And the vertical wall would take all the impact of the waves coming in against it.
19:21So we have the train railway line there, you know, main commuter line into Dublin, which is hugely
19:27important. Lots of industry infrastructure and people living here. This natural feature is doing
19:34us a massive favour.
19:47This dynamic coastline is highly responsive to extreme weather and sea conditions. And the team
19:53have been monitoring annual changes in the sand spit near Booterstown.
19:57So over the past 20 years, we've been able to use aerial imagery and also drone surveys to monitor
20:03the growth of the spit. And from 2005 to about 2008, it was just a little sandbar that was a little
20:10further south of where we are now. And that's when we started to see vegetation growing. So as that
20:16vegetation started to grow on the sandbar, it would trap sands and it would stabilise the area, which allowed it
20:22to continue to grow. And so by looking at those, then you can see what changes year on year?
20:27Correct. We can look at various areas of the spit that may be of concern for us during storm
20:33seasons. And then we can also look at the growth of the vegetation and monitor the spit as it's growing
20:38north here in Dublin Bay. What have you seen storms do to this sand spit over the past 20 years?
20:43We had a very active storm season at the end of 2024 in October and November, and that had a real
20:49impact on the southern end of the spit. And so these very large waves were overtopping the vegetation
20:56and they were moving the sediment and it actually caused what we call an overwash. And so there's an
21:01area of the spit where all of the vegetation has been washed away and the elevation has also decreased.
21:08How reliable and sustainable as a protective structure is this sand spit?
21:13So the spit itself, because it is naturally formed, it will repair itself over time if something is to
21:20happen out here. We don't know for certain what's going to happen in the future, of course.
21:26The waves can change, the storms can get more intense, and we might not have the same amount of sediment
21:32that's here now currently. Researcher Stephen Hoogle has built a tool to map the land between tides.
21:40By logging tidal variations and applying a bit of trigonometry, he can estimate the steepness of the
21:45shoreline and then layer in data on wave height to see the bigger picture of the bay's natural protection.
21:53We can use that to work out the point at which waves break. And in this case, what we're interested in
21:58is how wide that zone is, because the wider that zone is and the further offshore it is,
22:04the more wave energy is dissipated before it hits the shoreline. So more energy is going to be lost
22:09by the waves down in this region? Exactly, before it ever reaches the shore. Whereas down here we see
22:15that the zone is much narrower and it's actually much closer to shore, so we see that there's actually
22:19more energy is ending up on the shoreline. So we can essentially work out what areas are better
22:23protected and what areas have less protection correct. Storms are becoming more frequent and
22:31intense and the reality is that no wall of sand or concrete will stop them. But learning how to work
22:37better with nature and by harnessing its own protective power, we can create a coastline and a future
22:43that's more resilient for our communities and our environment.
22:57That's our 10 things to know about storms. Next time we try not to stir the hornet's nest of invasive species.
23:13So
23:24you
23:31you
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