February’s Cyclone Gabrielle brought rainfall of 300-400mm with wind gusts of 140km/h or more during the storm’s three-day rolling maul. Photo / Getty Images
February’s Cyclone Gabrielle brought rainfall of 300-400mm with wind gusts of 140km/h or more during the storm’s three-day rolling maul. Photo / Getty Images
The year 2023 has already been a year of extremes. Auckland saw its wettest month on record in January, with the central city recording 539mm of rain, smashing the previous monthly record of 420mm from 1869.
February’s Cyclone Gabrielle, meanwhile, brought rainfall of 300-400mm – more in some places –with wind gusts of 140km/h or more during the storm’s three-day rolling maul. And frankly, in much of the North Island, it doesn’t seem to have stopped raining or blowing since.
For all that, 2023 might yet break another record before it’s done: by becoming our warmest year on record. If it does, the previous record won’t have lasted long – it was set only last year.
While temperatures in New Zealand can be fairly variable, of course, this recording-breaking temperature thing has become a trend, with the four warmest years on record all occurring since 2016, according to Niwa.
It isn’t just on land that things are warming up, it’s at sea, too. Marine heatwaves occur more often now than they did 50 years ago.
In Under the Weather, climate scientist James Renwick says both in New Zealand and around the globe, we’ve seen about twice as many high-temperature records broken as low-temperature records over the past 10 years.
Indeed, during 2022, 137 high-temperature records were set in New Zealand, while no low-temperature records were broken at all.
With rising global average temperatures expected to breach the crucial 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels as early as 2027, and an even higher rise on the cards, temperature records seem likely to be broken most years from now on – which means big change is on the way for New Zealand.
“Whatever the rate of warming, our country is going to get a complete makeover,” Renwick says.
“It won’t be the same. We will grow used to the changes, of course – what other choice do we have? But Aotearoa will be a very different place in a world that is even a degree or two warmer.”
Under the Weather: A Future Forecast for New Zealand by James Renwick (HarperCollins, $39.99)
