We weathered the stormiest winter in 143 years last year, scientists have confirmed.

Climatologists at NUI Maynooth have identified the winter of 2013/2014 as the stormiest in 143 years for Ireland and the UK.

The research by Dr Tom Matthews, Dr Conor Murphy and Shaun Harrigan from NUI Maynooth’s Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS), together with Prof. Rob Wilby of Loughborough University (UK), used long-running atmospheric datasets to characterise winter storminess over the North Atlantic for the last 66 years and as far back as winter 1871-1872 for Ireland and the UK.

“The results indicated that last winter was the stormiest in the 66 year record across the North Atlantic due to the unprecedented strength and number of cyclones over the mid- and high-latitude North Atlantic respectively,” a staement for the college said today.

Frequency and intensity

For Ireland and the UK, although previous winters experienced more storms (e.g. 1914-1915, the first winter of World War 1), and storms that were, on average, more intense during the late 1980s to early 1990s, no year in the 143 year record had a winter as severe as 2013-2014 when both the frequency and intensity of storms are combined.

Dr Tom Matthews said: “Inspired by the severe weather we experienced last winter we decided to assess the extent to which these conditions were unusual in the long-term context.

“This is an important task as such destructive weather events are of tremendous societal significance as we saw last winter in both Ireland and the UK.

“Cyclones typically form over the North Atlantic Ocean and travel east toward Ireland and the UK. The number and intensity of cyclones experienced each year has a significant influence on the amount of rainfall and extreme wind speeds.”

The research is published in the September 2014 issue (Volume 4) of Nature Climate Change Journal.