What can we expect weather-wise this holiday period? NIWA's principal scientist climate Dr James Renwick says, "It's too early to say for sure how Christmas itself will be, but if the La Niña influence continues, New Zealand should be in for a mild and relatively settled few months over the summer".

A historic agreement, aimed at improving country-to-country collaboration on marine research, observations and data management between New Zealand and Australia, has been signed in Canberra this morning.

The Summary for Policymakers of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report on extreme weather events, released overnight, concludes that a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events.

NIWA scientists will use geochemistry of precisely-dated kauri tree rings to examine New Zealand's climate during the last millennium. The highly-detailed chemical signatures contained in the iconic kauri may reveal an untold story about temperatures, storms, droughts, and winds that our country faced centuries before instruments were around. The findings from this research project will provide information on New Zealand's past climate variability as a context against which to consider potential future changes in climate and their impacts.

New Zealand's National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and New Zealand MetService have issued a tropical cyclone outlook on behalf of collaborating organisations from the southwest Pacific, including Australia, the USA, the Pacific Island National Meteorological Services, French Polynesia, and New Caledonia.

New Zealand climate scientists have detected the coldest day ever recorded in New Zealand, while looking at old New Zealand temperature records being entered into the National Climate database. The new record for our lowest recorded daily minimum temperature occurred 108 years ago, at Ranfurly in Central Otago, in 1903: a shivering -25.6°C

NIWA’s weather prediction model simulated the intense rainfall which fell just north of the capital, and flooded parts of Porirua, on Sunday 27 March. Thirty nine millimetres of rain fell in less than an hour, around 1.00pm.

Over the past decade, predicting the weather, and understanding the changes in climate, has emerged as one of the most important and topical areas of scientific endeavour.

The expected impact of ex-tropical cyclone Zelia this week reinforces NIWA's 2010-11 season tropical cyclone outlook. The outlook indicates higher than normal risk of ex-tropical cyclones over the Tasman Sea region and New Zealand during the present La Nina event (through to April).