Gareth Renowden • Jun 23, 2013 •
I took Rosie the truffle machine for a walk around the farm just before dark yesterday. We were both a bit stir-crazy after four days of cold, cold rain and a couple of days of screaming southerlies that brought snow to our hills. The ground passed field capacity at the beginning of last week, when [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jun 12, 2013 •
In my column at The Daily Blog today, I ruminate on the links between the historic and damaging floods in central Europe and the rapid warming of the Arctic. What will it take to make the world’s leaders wake up to the rapid changes that are happening now? Comments at TDB, please… … Read More
Jesse Dykstra • Jan 29, 2013 •
From a natural disaster perspective, Australia is having a much worse year than New Zealand, despite our apparent penchant for earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding, and the occasional crippling winter storm on this side of the ditch. To date, the Insurance Council of Australia has officially declared three natural disasters in 2013 (the Tasmanian bush fires, New South Wales … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jul 05, 2012 •
Extreme weather events are where the climate change rubber hits the road, and if events over the last month are anything to go by, global warming is currently doing doughnuts and burnouts on tarmac right round the globe. Kevin Trenberth put it rather nicely in an interview with PBS Newshour in the US: “This is [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Dec 21, 2011 •
Grab some holly, deck your halls, heat up some mince pies, and then settle down to the last Climate Show of 2011. We look at the outcome of the Durban conference, discuss heavy rain in New Zealand and record-breaking weather extremes in the USA, and ponder the implications of news of more methane erupting from [...] … Read More
Jesse Dykstra • Dec 15, 2011 •
Tourists stranded by floodwaters in Nelson. Source: The Nelson Mail Rain-laden clouds from the north Tasman sea settled over the top of the south island several days ago, and have been drenching the Nelson and Golden Bay regions ever since. Extreme rainfall has been recorded in Takaka, Richmond and Nelson, with the Kotinga gauge at Takaka recordind an unprecedented 423mm … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Nov 10, 2011 •
Bad news on carbon emissions balanced by good news on solar photovoltaics, a Medicane bringing dramatic flash flooding to Italy and France, a scientist who thinks the Arctic could be effectively ice free in late summer in only four years, and the inside story on what the New Zealand election might mean for climate policy [...] … Read More
Jesse Dykstra • Oct 28, 2011 •
Flooding in Thailand Source: thesun.co.uk Global Economic Hub Thailand is a global manufacturing hub, and a leading exporter of automobiles, electronics, textiles, clothing and food. Exports of goods and services accounting for approximately 70% of Thailands’ GDP in 2010. Tourism has largely recovered following the Indian Ocean tsunami (which claimed more the 5000 lives in Thailand), accounting … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jun 26, 2011 •
The extraordinary sequence of extreme weather events during the last 18 months is probably the worst run of natural disasters since 1816, when a huge volcanic eruption at Mt Tambora cooled the earth enough to cause the famous “year without a summer“, according to a powerful blog post by Weather Underground founder Jeff Masters. He [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Feb 15, 2011 •
Jim Salinger’s spending the summer at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. This reflection on the lessons of Australia’s recent floods first ran in the Waikato Times at the beginning of the month, but I felt it deserved a wider audience and so with Jim’s permission reproduce it here. As I watch from my summer [...] … Read More