Ocean Living: Eternal appeal of life by the sea
Dry spell? It’s not just around the Med where fires can take hold. A BBQ unit set this off on Kerry’s Banna strand
Will climate change bring a second wave of demand for Irish coastal property, as Covid did just three short years ago?
And, if it does, its effect could be long-term, far longer: think generations ahead? This is a tide that isn’t going to be turned back anytime as quickly.
The deadly global pandemic had a widely noted effect not just on daily family lives (and, losses of life and liberty) but also on lifestyles.
By extension, Covid also impacted on property location options, which for those with luxury of choice took a much-remarked upon pivot, a lemming-like rush to the sea.
From the start, many Irish workers abandoned built-up areas, high-density lifestyles, busy offices and other work environments and moved home, perhaps out of city flat-shares to family houses, from urban and suburban family homes to more isolationist rural retreats, and went in waves to the sea.
Properties that had been in scant and seasonal use suddenly found a new purpose, as bolt-holes.
Collectively and individually, we couldn’t fly overseas for holidays for a year or two through various lockdowns and other restrictions on travel – so, we staycationed, camped and caravanned, glamped, bunked in, struck out and roamed our native shores.
The likes of already-cool surfing and year-round sea swimming passed from niche to cult and then on to commonplace, aided and abetted by cheap wetsuits in supermarkets and dry-robes of various sorts tumbling in price, even if hardly likely to ever gain traction in style stakes.
Now, just as foreign holidays came back on the radar for Irish holidaymakers in summer 2023 (to an almost extraordinary level: anecdotally many Irish tourism spots report a downturn in visitor levels this summer, official stats are awaited) flocking to the Mediterranean and other sun spots….where tens of thousands of holidaymakers got more than they bargained for.
Europe burned, simple as.
All around the Mediterranean and inland across swathes of southern Europe, temperatures soared after an already overheated spring, hitting new highs. 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit, yikes) wasn’t uncommon, cities got roasted all the more, tourist attractions shut down, water ran out, parts of Spain are turning to desert, and the hills were ablaze in forest fires.
It wasn’t/isn’t just Europe: China too, the south-west of the US and Mexico also burst into flames and don’t forget the early summer fires in Canda which cast a pall over US cities hundreds of miles south of the border.
But, here? One of the wettest Julys according to Met Office records going back over 80 years: our temperate climate is changing too but, for now, in less dramatic ways that over the waters.
We’ve yet to count the cost of rapidly escalating climate change on this isle stuck out in the Atlantic, but change is-a-coming; deadly impacts on agriculture and food production, acidification in rivers and desiccated reservoirs, on altering sea temperatures and marine life, or sea levels and exacerbated coastal erosion.
The scant consolation is that we’re less likely to be a tinder-box for foresty, with forecasts of wetter winters and dryer summers: we’d better start building reservoirs as well as houses?
In almost a rerun of concerned European buyers snapping up Irish land and houses in the mid 1900s during the Cold War, already several prime Irish coastal properties have been bought by overseas buyers, citing climate change fears as their key motivators. This time they include purchasers from the US, as well as from across mainland Europe, lured almost bizarrely by our rain screens, and home hunters from abroad are increasing citing our more moderate climate as reasons to move here: the trend is likely to continue.
Scientists tell us that Ireland will be somewhat of an outlier: as Europe fries, we’ll stew, and possibly seemingly paradoxically at lower temperatures than we’re currently expecting.
The Gulf Stream continues to weaken its effects, which have traditionally given us our temperate climate and helped ‘lifestyle’ properties, quite famously for decades in places like Glengarriff using the example of rare and tender plants on Garnish Island (Ilnacullin) with beguiling tag line about such locations being ‘warmed by the Gulf Stream'.
That stream (also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)), bringing warm water from the Gulf of Mexico northwards into the Atlantic Ocean, may decrease by 30% or more by the end of this century meaning a cooling after a 2007 temperature peak (temporary mid-June 2023 high sea temperatures here notwithstanding).
So, a bit like a standard Irish weather forecast, we’re getting change, but in unequal measures, along with forecasts of rising sea levels, with a rise in mean levels between 25mm to as much as 80mm by the end of this century.
So, when buying by the sea for the decades ahead, best to check a property’s elevation/altitude along with other location drivers, as well as the access roads to get to and from it ….unless you want to come by boat, or by ark.
