Guest Author • Mar 22, 2021 •
Sabrina Pit, Western Sydney University Yet again, large swathes of New South Wales are underwater. A week of solid rain has led to floods in the Mid-North Coast, Sydney and the Central Coast, with several areas being evacuated as I write. As a resident of the NSW Far North Coast, which has had its share of devastating floods, many … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Aug 22, 2014 •
It’s been a long time since my last post: apologies for that. You may blame a bad cold, an urgent need for root canal work, the peak of the truffle season (and truffle tours for culinary heroes1 ), the start of pruning and political distractions for the drop off in activity here. Normal service should […] … Read More
Waiology • Jul 16, 2014 •
By Daniel Collins As we have seen in Northland in recent days and in Christchurch in March, severe floods pose a significant threat to rural and urban lives and livelihoods. One person drowned in the Waitangi River on Saturday, and the cost of the flooding will likely be in the millions. As a point of comparison, … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jun 18, 2014 •
Last week was something of a trial: bits of my little farm were being washed out to sea, tracks were eroding, and our road was closed by slips and rockfalls. Just another in a sequence of extreme weather events that have got the locals in North Canterbury wondering about the weird weather being inflicted on […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Mar 31, 2014 •
After the usual run of late nights and argument, the IPCC has released the second part of its fifth report — the Working Group 2 report on climate impacts and risks management. Commenting on the report, VUW climate scientist Professor Tim Naish said “this latest report makes it quite clear that New Zealand is under-prepared […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Mar 27, 2014 •
That’s a climate model running on my iMac, thanks to BOINC, Climateprediction.net, and the new New Zealand and Australia modelling experiment launched yesterday. In this guest post, Dr Suzanne Rosier of NIWA explains what it’s all about… A new citizen science experiment in which scientists will address possible links between climate change and extreme weather […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Mar 12, 2014 •
In this week’s post at The Daily Blog — Up a blind alley (without a paddle) — I ruminate further on the message to be gleaned from last week’s flooding in Christchurch, and how ignoring the shape of things to come makes for bad government and worse politics: What happened in Christchurch was not a […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Mar 09, 2014 •
This morning’s NASA Earth Observatory image of the day shows the impact of last week’s heavy rain in Christchurch and Banks Peninsula on the sea around. The light blue colours show sediment washed off the land. If you visit the EO page, they provide a helpful reference image: the region snapped from space in late […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jan 16, 2014 •
The first major study to look at the impact of sea level rise on Christchurch and Banks Peninsula following the 2010/11 earthquake sequence projects a watery future for many parts of the city and its surrounding shorelines. The image above1 shows changes in ground elevation between 2003 and 2011 in the Christchurch region. Areas in […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Dec 16, 2013 •
Two major new government reports on New Zealand’s emissions projections and the expected impacts of four degrees of warming on NZ agriculture were released without fanfare last Friday — the timing clearly designed to minimise media fallout from reports that highlight the paucity and ineffectiveness of current climate policy settings. Climate change minister Tim Groser […] … Read More