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Wed 07 Jul 2007Scientist says effect of climate change is apparentMacGill summer school:Significant evidence of climate change is apparent in Ireland, including fewer frosts and much heavier rainfall, one of the State's leading climate experts told the MacGill summer school.Rainfall on Malin Head in Donegal is now nearly double the winter-time levels of the 1940s, while frosts in the Midlands are occurring only half as often, said scientist John Sweeney of the National University of Ireland Maynooth. Potatoes will require irrigation to grow in some counties within 40 years, while water supplies in the east and the southeast will be significantly threatened well before then.