Nighttime temperatures are expected to remain 'uncomfortable' over the next few days, as the heatwave continues.
A status orange high temperature warning is in place for Cavan, Monaghan, south Leitrim, Roscommon, Longford and Westmeath until Friday.
Temperatures of over 30 degrees are expected in those areas, with overnight temperatures 'no lower than around 20 degrees'.
High temperature warnings are in place across Ireland until at least Friday, with temperatures expected to exceed 30 Celsius by day & remain around 20 C overnight for some locations.
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Remember to be #SunSafe & #BeSummerReady pic.twitter.com/Svp8gSN4pT— Met Éireann (@MetEireann) July 20, 2021
A status yellow warning is in place for the rest of the country, amid daytime temperatures of 27-30 degrees and overnight ones of 17-20 degrees.
On The Hard Shoulder, Alan O'Reilly of Carlow Weather said Irish people certainly aren't used to these kinds of nighttime temperatures in particular.
He said: “The nighttime probably makes it a little bit more uncomfortable for most people. It’s not going to below 15-16 degrees - it may not even get below 17-18 degrees for many places.
"Even at that, it’s only going to be for a couple of hours - at midnight, it will still be above 20-22 degrees in some areas.
“The nighttimes really are the struggle… it’s hard to escape and cool down.”
He said temperatures in some areas are definitely going to get above 30s this week in areas - potentially as high as 32 degrees, which would “get us very time to the all time July record of 32.3 degrees, from 2006.”
The sunshine will be hazier on Thursday, with a risk of some thundery showers in parts of the north-west and north Midlands from tomorrow.
A 'slow change' in the weather is then forecast from Friday - with showers mainly in the south and west, and a gradual return to cooler weather conditions.
For now, however, Alan said we've "officially reached heatwave status" - after five days in a row of temperatures over 25 degrees.
Hotter and dryer summers
The unusually hot Irish weather has led to discussions around whether climate change is to blame.
Dr Cara Augustenborg, Environmental Policy Fellow at University College Dublin, said there is a difference between climate and weather - and individual events can be weather-related.
However, she said more intense summers are what many scientists are expecting.
She said: "[They're predicting] hotter and dryer conditions over Ireland in summer, and then bigger and wetter storms in winter.
“Met Éireann said just yesterday… this kind of trend is what they expect. In general, we expect more weather records to be broken - we will exceed that temperature of 32.3 degrees from 2006… and that will happen more often.
"What was a once in a hundred-year event becomes a one in a ten-year event or an annual event… this will essentially become our new normal.”
Dr Augustenborg said it's clear the climate is changing, and we're seeing more extreme weather events such as the recent flooding in Germany and Belgium or the intense heatwave in western Canada and the US.
She said Ireland is more fortunate than some other areas of the world, but there will be a 'massive human migration' in the future as more and more land becomes uninhabitable.
She suggested Ireland is more culpable for climate change than many other regions due to a very high carbon lifestyle here, so we will have an obligation to take in people who can no longer live in their home regions.
