iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Tremendous day in Croke Park on Sunday for Westmeath's 2nd Leinster title.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Still on for Saints promoted, Hearts in Scotland, Arsenal in England. Northern Ireland's Shea Charles with the winner in St Marys last night.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

They found upper ocean density differences explained more of the trend in RAPID than deep ocean densities. Last year, we looked at signal and noise in the RAPID data and found the lowest layers the best place to look for a trend. I don't think these results contradict but add pieces to the puzzle.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

What goes up must come down. The AMOC at RAPID 26N in the North Atlantic is a balance of net northward flowing warm, shallow water (Gulf Stream, Ekman/wind, Thermocline) and southward flowing cold, deep water (upper and lower North Atlantic Deep Water). The dashed line is 1:1.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Bhaineas taitneamh a bheith páirteach san físchlár Sáile ar @tg4.bsky.social coicís ó shin. Tá súil agam go rabhas soiléir go leor ag labhairt faoi fuacht agus teas!

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I promise it wasn't I gave it the 1 star review:

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I often come back to the Atlantic being warmer than the Pacific at depth. At shallower depths, it seems obvious that the warm water is coming from the Med. But also the vertical heat transport due to overturning processes needs to be remembered. Anyone know of study partitioning those two processes?

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

The butterflies are flying it at the moment. clockwise from top (afaik at least!): red admiral, dragonfly, small tortoiseshell, holly blue (back of wings), grasshopper. From a blackberry picking session on the Old Rail Trail on Saturday.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

We've a great line up of MOC talks for this year's IAPSO-IAMAS-IACS conference in Busan, South Korea. I look forward to meeting colleagues and catching up.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

I don't think the Cork hurling area connects between the Limerick border pocket (Newtown, Charleville, Ballyhea) and the Lee valley, east Cork pocket. Mallow, Clyda are strongly football and I think that connects with the Slieve Luachra, Muskerry football strongholds.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

This is an update to the work Hannah and Amelia did last summer. We used the winning senior clubs to determine the hurling areas in Munster (circled by blue below). This year we checked that against the clubs of the squads for the final (black dots) and they matched well.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Laraghbryan, home to ICARUS, hydrangas and acer going strong.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Lovely summer walks up from the train to the office in Maynooth.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Loadsa news up on our webpage. Particular welcome to Emma and Hannah who are with us for the summer and Jittrarast, Lionel, and JP who are doing the MSc projects in the group: icarusoceans.maynoothuniversity.ie?page_id=525

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

The accompanying original old maps are pretty lovely things. Here it says the 1842 measurements were 16.3 feet below the bolt in the last picture. We're lucky that some of these old marks still exist—a lot have been destroyed

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

As part of the Ordnance Survey, in 1842 sea level measurements were made relative to this very mark for six weeks. All we need to do is tie this mark to the modern network and we know how much sea level has risen around Ireland in 180 or so years.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

After the Mary Robinson conference in Ballina, it was west to survey an old sea level benchmark for me and Patrick. We got all the weathers but the sun shone for our survey. Croagh Patrick in the background. We are surveying a few points around Ireland to pin down Ireland's sea levels from 1842.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

With the turn in the weather, the marine heatwave seems to have peaked. These data are from the M3 data buoy off southwest Ireland. Source: eurosea.marine.ie/his

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Focusing on timescales shorter than a year, we show the shelf sea-level variability is wind-driven and that it indeed is directly affecting long-shore current variability. These longshore current changes are found on the outer-shelf and only impinge on the upper slope.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Study led by Dr Sam Diabaté: In this paper, we were interested in finding out whether the circulation changes recorded at various moorings on and around the Northwest European Shelf were related to the sea-level variability on the shelf. kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

I think the real story here is the increase in baseline temperatures. Since autumn last year, temperatures have been following the 90th percentile. Throw some calm weather on top of that and you have a severe heatwave. With warming oceans, what we now class as a heatwave will be normality.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

This satellite data is confirmed by an excellent real-time resource from the Irish Marine Institute that monitors heatwaves at sentinel locations around Ireland. You can see the blue line creeping up in sites west of Ireland. Source: eurosea.marine.ie/his

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

This figure places it in context of the June 2023 heatwave that was at the time the severest on record. It's probably reaching higher severity than 2023 but temperatures are not as high yet as it is earlier in the year.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

The heatwave is classed as severe according to the marine heatwave traceker over much of Irish waters.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

The marine heatwave off the coast of Ireland is pretty severe at the moment. Temperatures are about 3ºC above normal for this time of the year. Source: www.marine.ie/site-area/da...

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

The Bealtaine fire is lit and summer welcomed on the Hill of Uisneach

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

And some constituents are better than others for picking up the low frequency signal—such as lower North Atlantic Deep Water. This water mass is very sensitive to low frequency AMOC change and can be reconstructed very effectively using temperature and salinity at depth on the western boundary.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

We can improve the signal to noise ratio by removing the influence of variables such as Ekman transport, which do not contribute to the low-frequency/climatic signal.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

We published a signal-to-noise analysis of AMOC observations in GRL. TLDR: Direct observations (RAPID) of the AMOC do show a decline in line with climate model projected weakening (~1 Sv/decade) but the noise is still very large in comparison to the signal. Paper: doi.org/10.1029/2025...

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Come along to hear me present the DIAS Geophysics Statutory Public Lecture: "When the Ocean Changes Course: The Threat of an Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) Collapse"

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

2nd annual Irish AMOC meeting with keynotes from Jerry McManus, Neil Fraser, Dmitry Sidorenko.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Register now for the 2nd Irish Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) Meeting 2025. 📅 Dates: January 9-10, 2025 📍 Location: DCU Alpha, Glasnevin, Dublin 11 Register here: forms.office.com/pages/respon... (thanks to iCrag for the flyer)

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Delighted to see the great co-development of tropical cyclone intensity led by Dr Sam Hallam of Maynooth with colleagues across the Caribbean.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Lectures this morning in GY369 on my fav topic—also the topic I find hardest not go wandering off on a 20 minute stream of consciousness rant on.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I'm speaking at Ocean Knowledge 2030 next week and gathering. After record heat in summer 2023, summer 2024 was cooler than average in Irish waters. It kinda felt like it too oceanknowledge2030.marine.ie/event/136269...

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

This week, we took our Climate Change MSc class to Wexford on the east coast of Ireland for their fieldtrip. They were documenting the erosion of Kilpatrick beach where 200+ m have been lost since the earliest maps in mid-19th century.

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 31/10/2024

Always a nice day when PhD students graduate. Congratulations to Sam and Catherine

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 22/10/2024

I like compiling observational estimates of AMOC strength. I recently became interested in how well the Copernicus compilation of reanalysis was doing. Here is the Copernicus reanalysis in grey, RAPID in red, and @emmaworthington.bsky.social's in black marine.copernicus.eu/access-data/...

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Gerard McCarthy @germac.bsky.social · 13/11/2023

Coastal flooding and damage in Galway following #StormDebi. The @MarineInst gauge in Galway showing a storm surge of 1.1 m coming on top of a (modest) spring high tide.

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