Dublin shines brighter than rest of the country

A study has revealed that Dublin has artificial light emissions close to seven times higher than any other county.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has released the Frontier Series publication, “How dark is your sky? Estimating artificial light in Ireland from satellite imagery, 2015-2019”.

The study revealed that the two areas with the highest light emissions are Dublin’s Pembroke South Dock and the North Inner City.

Ireland has lower artificial light emissions than other European countries such as the UK, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Irish cities also have lower light emissions than other major cities like London and Paris.

The CSO said the analysis was carried out using Graphical Information Systems (GIS) software tools combining Ordnance Survey mapping information with satellite data on monthly cloud-free light emissions.

They said that data was from a Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite Day Night Band (VIIRS-DNB) sensor on the Suomi-NPP satellite, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US.

Commenting on the release, Tim Linehan, statistician, said:

“This CSO Frontier Series publication analyses satellite data to estimate artificial light emissions in Ireland between 2015 and 2019.

“The analysis shows that Ireland in January 2019 has significantly lower average artificial light emissions with 0.92 units than the UK (1.78 units), Portugal (2.52 units) and the Netherlands (7.43 units).

“When comparing with international cities, Dublin city (24.29 units) has significantly lower light emissions in January 2019 than Paris (43.52 units), Inner London West (53.27 units) and Inner London East (46.78 units).”

“Dublin has much higher measured average emissions (11.53 units) compared to the second highest county Louth (1.70 units).”