Met Éireann records Ireland's warmest year
- Published
The warmest year on record has been recorded by the Republic of Ireland's weather service Met Éireann.
The Irish Climate Report 2023 created by the service, external shows the average annual temperature rose above 11C (51.8F) for the first time, beating the previous warmest year of 2022.
It was also a year of extremes, with the warmest June and the wettest March and July also being recorded.
The figures followed an EU climate change report in November which said it was "virtually certain" that 2023 would be the warmest year on record, globally.
The Met Office has not yet released figures for 2023 for Northern Ireland.
But Northern Ireland recorded its warmest ever June in 2023 in a series going back to 1884.
It recorded a mean temperature of 16C, three degrees above normal for the time of year, external.
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It was also the wettest July on record for Northern Ireland in a series going back to 1836.
In July, 185.4mm of rain fell, beating the previous record of 185.2mm of rain in July 1936.
Year of storms
It has also been a stormy year with 11 named storms in 2023 including three in December- Elin, Fergus, and Gerrit.
The arrival of Storm Gerrit on Wednesday marked the earliest in the season that a storm named with the letter G arrived.
Some places in Northern Ireland experienced flooding after Storm Gerrit made landfall
The previous earliest one was Storm Georgina on 23 January 2018, while the latest was storm Gareth on 11 March 2019.
It is also only the fourth time that storm names have reached the letter G since naming began in 2015.