Climate & Weather

Defining drought and identifying its causes and impacts on humans.

NIWA oceanographer Dr Cliff Law explains the impacts of ocean acidification on organisms that use carbonates to build their shells, and on bacteria.

New Zealand’s forests and other land areas may be absorbing up to 60% more carbon dioxide than has been calculated, with much of this uptake likely occurring in native forests, NIWA scientists have discovered.

These datasets are available in a range of formats.

NIWA has recently created synthetic, multi-year, 10-minute wind datasets at 15 wind farm sites across New Zealand. These will be used by the Electricity Commission to model the impact of wind farms on the national grid.

Due to its position in the 'Roaring Forties', a belt of strong winds in the Southern Hemisphere which generally occur between the latitudes of 40 and 49 degrees, as well as its small size, New Zealand is a windy country.

This lesson will explore the use of Māori environmental indicators [tohu] to anticipate local weather and climate conditions.

Sea surface temperatures in the southern Tasman Sea rose to exceptionally high levels in late 2017 and early 2018. These temperatures were far above any others previously observed at that time of year in the region, and extended west from New Zealand to Tasmania and mainland southeast Australia.

View annual, seasonal and monthly summaries of temperature, rainfall and sunshine data from across New Zealand.

Ideas for projects using climate data

These datasets are available in a range of formats.