Sunshine Levels in Ireland (Hours Per Year)
Wexford is the sunniest county in Ireland with an average of 1411 hours of sunshine per year and receives a top liveability score of 100. The top 5 are all eastern or south-eastern coastal counties. The dullest counties are located to the north and west, with Sligo having the lowest total with an average of 1144 hours of sunshine across the county.
If sunshine is important to you then look for a property within roughly 10 km of the coast, in particular the south or east coast. The tendency for coastal regions to record more bright sunshine than inland areas is the result of the convective development of clouds over land.
Rank | County | Sunshine (hrs/annum) | Liveability Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wexford | 1411 | 100 |
| 2 | Dublin | 1376 | 87 |
| 3 | Waterford | 1356 | 79 |
| 4 | Louth | 1352 | 78 |
| 5 | Wicklow | 1317 | 65 |
| 6 | Carlow | 1307 | 61 |
| 7 | Kilkenny | 1304 | 60 |
| 8 | Kildare | 1289 | 54 |
| 8 | Cork | 1289 | 54 |
| 10 | Meath | 1273 | 48 |
| 11 | Laois | 1254 | 41 |
| 12 | Tipperary | 1245 | 38 |
| 13 | Westmeath | 1234 | 34 |
| 14 | Offaly | 1231 | 32 |
| 16 | Monaghan | 1226 | 31 |
| 16 | Clare | 1226 | 31 |
| 17 | Limerick | 1220 | 28 |
| 18 | Kerry | 1214 | 26 |
| 19 | Longford | 1204 | 23 |
| 20 | Cavan | 1200 | 21 |
| 21 | Galway | 1198 | 20 |
| 22 | Roscommon | 1181 | 14 |
| 23 | Donegal | 1158 | 5 |
| 24 | Leitrim | 1153 | 3 |
| 25 | Mayo | 1150 | 2 |
| 26 | Sligo | 1144 | 0 |
Methodology
The data used in this section comes from the Met Eireann report “Long-term climate averages for Ireland 1981 – 2010”. As part of this report, 30 year averages of annual sunshine duration were calculated and used to produce gridded maps at 1km resolution. Using this data, we were able to produce the sunshine duration map of Ireland shown above. The mean annual sunshine duration for each county was calculated using the zonal statistics algorithm in QGIS.