El Nino and global warming may be changing our climate, but there is no conclusive evidence to suggest the Atlantic is getting systematically rougher, an international ocean weather conference heard in Dublin yesterday.
Current conditions in the north-eastern Atlantic may be no worse than they were a century ago, Mr Vincent Cardone, a US weather expert, told representatives of the major oil companies, scientists and researchers at the Fifth Annual Metocean Workshop in Dublin Castle.
Opening the workshop, the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Dr Woods, said several studies indicated that significant hydrocarbon potential existed in the Rockall Trough.
He recently launched a petroleum infrastructure programme, funded by the 16 companies awarded licences in the trough last June. As part of this programme, a budget of nearly £5 million had been earmarked by a Rockall studies group - a reflection of confidence in the exploration work.
Paying tribute to the "spirit of co-operation" among the offshore sector, the Minister said he welcomed the development of a metocean or weather ocean strategy for the Rockall area.
Dr Woods said he expected a high level of interest in exploration licences under the South Porcupine Frontier licensing round, which will be awarded next year. Under the round, which closes on December 15th, some 40,000 square kilometres are available in a water depth varying from 2,000 metres in the east to more than 2,500 metres in the north-west.
The two-day workshop, which is sponsored by BP, Statoil and Shell, is being hosted for the first time in Ireland by the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources, the Marine Institute, and the Galway-based consultancy, MCS International.
Considerable research into climate change and the effect on the Atlantic ocean during the last decade had not come up with incontrovertible evidence, Mr Cardone of Oceanweather Incorporated suggested. This research had been prompted by growing concern within the northern European insurance industry, the offshore exploration sector and the media and general public about an increase in storminess.
Similar concerns had been expressed in North America in response to measurements of extreme waves made by calibrated instruments on data buoys, moored off the east and west coasts of the US and Canada. Much of the research had culminated in a project known as Wave and Storms in the Atlantic, which was now complete, he said.
One of the big problems was the variability of data, he said. It was virtually impossible to come up with a homogeneous marine data bank for wind and waves. Historical weather maps had creeping inconsistencies, and there was also a lack of consistency in marine reports of wave heights.
Most of the information recorded on ships was concentrated in the southern part of the North Atlantic, due to the location of the busiest shipping lanes, and was hampered by the fact that some vessels used anemometers and others used Beaufort systems for measuring wind speeds, he said.
Observational and storm proxy studies indicated that the storm and surge climate of north-west Europe had not systematically worsened in the past hundred years. Certain data also suggested that the climate now was no worse than earlier this century.
However, there is evidence of inter-annual and inter-decadal variability in the wave climate of the Atlantic margin, he said. Improvement in climate models would yield better information, but more studies were required.
