Atmospheric analysis

The Invertebrate Collection, housed at Greta Point in Wellington, comprises about 300,000 jars or specimens but only about 100,000 are officially registered. With new specimens being discovered all the time, there is a lot of work to do.

Climate Present and Past is involved with maintaining nationally important collections and undertaking field work.

Although New Zealand is located in a temperate region, the country still experiences extreme climatic conditions from time to time.

The Earth’s climate experiences changes caused by natural fluctuations as well as human influences. These result in trends over time for different climatic variables.

New Zealand is affected by weather systems which originate over the seas around the country, which can be characterised as 12 daily weather types.

ACRE Antarctica is a project within the Deep South National Science Challenge.

ACRE Pacific is a NIWA-led part of the the wider ACRE initiative, run by the UK Met Office.

The Past Interpretation of Climate Tool (PICT) is an interactive platform that "allows palaeoclimate researchers to interpret data in terms of atmospheric circulation (AC) patterns and how those patterns relate to synoptic weather types".

The South Pacific Rainfall Atlas (SPRAT) is a project that was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to use the NIWA rainfall database and generate rainfall anomaly maps at the station and island group level for the Pacific Islands.

The Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, or IPO, is a large-scale, long period oscillation that influences climate variability over the Pacific Basin.

The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the largest element of the intraseasonal (30-90 day) variability in the tropical atmosphere.

Tropical cyclones are tropical storms that are characterised by a low pressure centre, strong winds, and thunderstorms that produce heavy rain.