NIWA's 2022 Annual Climate Summary is now out.

It's official - last year was once again Aotearoa's warmest on record, knocking 2021 off the top spot. It was also the 8th most unusually wet year on record – meaning lots of rain fell in unusual places.

12 January 2023

It's official - last year was once again Aotearoa's warmest on record, knocking 2021 off the top spot. It was also the 8th most unusually wet year on record – meaning lots of rain fell in unusual places.
NIWA's 2022 New Zealand Annual Climate Summary
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Highlights:

  • The nationwide average temperature was 13.76°C, +1.15°C above the 1981-2010 annual average and surpassing 2021 by +0.20°C.
  • The top 4 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2016.
  • No months were below average in temperature, with November being the most unusually warm.
  • The nationwide rainfall anomaly was 110%.
  • La Niña was one of the primary drivers of last year's weather patterns.
  • Sea surface temperatures near New Zealand also had a big impact, being above or well above average every month and resulting in a marine heatwave for most of the year
  • The highest air temperature was 34.7°C at Lake Karapiro on 3 January and the lowest was -11.6°C at Mt Cook Airport on 17 July.
  • Taranaki experienced New Zealand’s highest annual sunshine total with 2659 hours recorded at New Plymouth.
  • The wettest location was Cropp River (West Coast, 975 metres above sea level) with 11034 mm rainfall.
  • Of the six main centres in 2022, Tauranga was the wettest, Dunedin was the driest and coolest, Auckland was the warmest, Hamilton was the sunniest, and Wellington was the least sunny.
NIWA
2022 Annual Climate Summary records

Full report:

Check out the full Annual Climate Summary 2022 at https://niwa.co.nz/climate/summaries/annual-climate-summary-2022

Related information:

NIWA
Figure 1: Coloured stripes showing a time series of the national temperature anomaly calculated from NIWA's Seven Station Series, relative to the 1981-2010 baseline. Red colours indicate temperatures above the 1981-2010 baseline while blue colours indicate temperatures below the baseline. [NIWA]
NIWA
Figure 2: (a) Temperature anomalies from NIWA's seven station series from 1909 to 2022. Blue indicates temperatures colder than the 1981-2010 baseline, red indicates temperatures warmer than the 1981-2010 baseline. (b) Annual rainfall anomalies from 1960-2022 from NIWA’s Virtual Climate Station Network relative to the 1981-2020 baseline, averaged over New Zealand. [NIWA]
NIWA
Figure 3: Monthly temperature anomalies calculated from NIWA's seven station series. All bars are red, indicating that no month had an anomaly below 0°C. Values above 0.5°C are considered “above average”, while values above 1.2°C are considered to be “well above average”. [NIWA]
NIWA
Figure 4: Climate drivers that contributed to the unusual warmth and wetness of 2022. [NIWA]

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