Northern Ireland faces more floods like autumn 2023 thanks to climate change – government report
A report into last year's flooding in counties Armagh and Down says that such events are going to become twice as likely thanks to climate change.
The report makes a series of recommendations, ranging from improved "education" around flooding to the continuation of anti-flood building works in Newry and Portadown.
The flooding happened due to "extreme" and "unprecedented" rainfall in October and November, and amongst the harstest-hit places were the aforementioned towns and Downpatrick, Kilkeel, Newcastle, Newry, Rostrevor, and Warrenpoint.
The report which has now been published by the NI Executive is titled 'Review of South East Flooding Auumn 2023' and runs to 116 pages.
"October 2023 was an exceptionally wet month for the South East of Northern Ireland with more than 200% of the average monthly rainfall occurring," said the report.
And that was the culmination of the "wettest May-October on record since 1890" in Northern Ireland.
The resulting flood waters inundated some 600 properties, of which about 210 were homes.
As for the likelihood of such floods happening again, the report notes that "flooding of this magnitude is an infrequent event", meaning that "the probability of the rainfall related to Autum flooding is about 2.5% (one in 40) in any given year".
But it goes on to add that "with climate change, the frequency of such events will double".
It does not make clear exactly over what timeframe this is expected to happen, though figures elsewhere in the report suggest it is by 2080.
The report says that existing flooding defences in Newry, Portadown, Downpatrick and Portadown "performed well" (except for a section of flood bank in Newry which overflowed).
However "drainage systems generally lacked the capacity to handle the extreme nature of rainfall".
The report's recommendations include:
Develop a business case for a flood forecasting system (though this will take "significant time and public investment");
Review how sandbags are stockpiled and distributed;
Keep developing new anti-flood works in Newry and Portadown (with a contractor due to be appointed in Portadown later this year);
And “improve education and awareness through multi-agency training”.