Climate - News

Science Centres: Climate

16 December 2011

A team of scientists from NIWA and the University of Otago has won the top 2011 Prime Minister's Science Prize for their research into guiding the world's response to climate change.

15 December 2011

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".

9 December 2011

Scientists have been reviewing evidence of changes to New Zealand's climate. They've also been projecting future changes to New Zealand's climate, and the impact on biodiversity and marine habitats.

6 December 2011

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.

2 December 2011

A NIWA scientist has been looking at the effects of shifts in climate on water resources, in water-limited parts of New Zealand. 

19 November 2011

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.

4 November 2011

"Planning on a sea-level rise of X?" is the title of NIWA principal scientist Dr Rob Bell's paper at the New Zealand Coastal Society Annual Conference in Nelson this week. Dr Bell is a key-note speaker at the event. "It's a play on words," he says. "There is no single number to plan for."

2 November 2011

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.

21 October 2011

World experts on greenhouse gases will get together at the 16th WMO/ /IAEA meeting on Carbon Dioxide, other Greenhouse Gases, and Related Measurement Techniques (GGMT) conference, from 25-28 October 2011, in Wellington.

18 October 2011

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.

3 October 2011

In a world first, NIWA has designed a regional climate change ocean 'atlas' - for our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

12 July 2011

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

8 April 2011

NIWA Oceanographer Dr Craig Stevens has returned, with stunning images and data, from a successful month-long research trip in Antarctica, where he led a team of international and New Zealand scientists.

29 March 2011

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.

28 February 2011

More than 30 international experts in climate science will meet in Queenstown this week to discuss implementing a new a state-of-the-art global network to improve the quality of measurements of upper air climate variables.

11 February 2011

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.

27 January 2011

NIWA scientists leave for Brisbane this Friday 28 January.

18 January 2011

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).

16 December 2010

NIWA today released a report reviewing its seven station temperature series, which adds to its analysis of New Zealand’s temperature trends over the past 100 years.

16 December 2010

New climate modelling shows seasonal snow levels at New Zealand ski areas will be reduced by the effects of climate change in the coming years, but the good news is the loss may actually be less than originally anticipated and we should be able to continue to make snow, even under a more extreme climate scenario.