Hazards

A weekly update describing soil moisture patterns across the country to show where dry to extremely dry conditions are occurring or imminent. Regions experiencing significant soil moisture deficits are deemed “hotspots”. Persistent hotspot regions have the potential to develop into drought.

Kaikōura Canyon reveals its muddy secrets

New NIWA-led research shows increasing flood risk is going to be what leads people to make changes to adapt to sea-level rise.

New Zealand has just experienced its warmest June and July since records began in 1909 and – with one month to go - is on track for its second successive warmest winter on record.

With the winter snowpack starting to build, who’s keeping an eye out on conditions in the mountains?

Flood flows on the Buller River this month were the largest of any river in Aotearoa New Zealand in almost 100 years, NIWA measurements show.

Marsden-funded research investigating how erupting volcanoes can cause deadly and damaging tsunamis.

Innovative experiments are giving natural hazard researchers and PhD students a close look at how erupting volcanoes can cause deadly and damaging tsunamis.

Preliminary analysis by NIWA climate scientists has shown that the recent Canterbury rainfall was so extreme in some inland places that it could be expected to happen only once every 200 years.

The prodigious rainmaker that hit Canterbury earlier this month saw NIWA field teams out in the elements collecting flood data from bridges, cableways and jetboat gaugings.

We combine capabilities in weather, wave, storm surge and tide forecasting with tide gauge observations.

When high winds on the Auckland Harbour Bridge last September caused two trucks to topple over, one into a load-bearing strut, NIWA scientists began thinking about what role they could play in preventing it from happening again.