Photograph: Henrik Egede-Lassen/Zoomedia/PA WireData critical for tracking weather systems affecting Ireland is incomplete, but the body tasked with gathering it is facing a funding crisis, the Cop30 climate summit heard. The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) warned that the loss of the US as a key funder was putting its work in jeopardy. That work includes improving understanding of the increasingly volatile Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system of ocean currents responsible for keeping Ireland’s climate unusually mild for a country positioned so far north. Opinions differ on how dramatically and how soon the change could happen and GCOS members warned more data was urgently needed. “It’s taking essential data from deep in the ocean to the top of the atmosphere and everything in between,” he said.
