Author: Alex

A new paper published in the 2016 edition of Weather and Climate – the journal of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand – documents the purpose, challenges, next steps and future goals of the NZESM, the New Zealand Earth System Model.

As the paper points out, climate modelling has made significant progress in the last few decades with major advances in computer power and scientific understanding. However, understanding of the effect of the Southern Ocean on global climate remains limited. Since this has direct impacts on the way New Zealand can rely on and interpret the results of climate models, the New Zealand government was motivated to launch, as one of 11 mission-based National Science Challenges, the Deep South Challenge. This refers directly to the Southern Ocean – our Deep South – and the integral role it has on our climate.  The Deep South Challenge represents a significant national investment that provides the dual benefits of raising Earth System modelling capability in New Zealand, whilst at the same contributing to an international modelling effort, led by the UK.  The development of the NZESM is however just one of several programmes with the Challenge, which also include engagement and Vision Mātauranga, for example.

The development of the NZESM is already enabling the acceleration of New Zealand’s research capability into the effects of climate change. Over the next 5 years, the NZESM will complement and provide input into high resolution, regional climate models. Results from these models will inform research that investigates the impacts of climate change on New Zealand’s natural resources and the implications of those changes on New Zealand’s economy and lifestyle at a scale useful to many different stakeholders. 

Dr Jonny Williams – a Deep South Challenge scientist based at NIWA, Wellington and lead author of the paper – said “the development of the NZESM is a game changer for New Zealand science. Although there is a long history of weather prediction and climate modelling here, it is only with the realisation of the Deep South Challenge that true Earth System modelling research can take place here for the first time”.

Williams acknowledges the researchers he collaborates with around the country. He says that New Zealand has world-leading expertise in Southern Ocean and high latitude environmental processes, along with their impact on global climate and ecosystem change. “The NZESM team work with our international collaborators to build world leading scientific and technical software which is used globally; almost all of which is open source. This combined with the more local goal of helping New Zealanders with tangible guidance in the future, backed by robust, world leading science, makes for a highly satisfying yet challenging role,” he said.

Development of the New Zealand Earth System Model: NZESM (abstract)

The New Zealand Earth System Model (NZESM) is currently under development to help inform scientists, policy makers, climate-sensitive sectors of the economy, and the general public in New Zealand about climate change. The term ‘climate model’ is generally used to describe a computer model that incorporates physical aspects of the climate system such as atmospheric and oceanic fluid mechanics and thermodynamics. In addition, Earth System Models represent aspects of biology and chemistry such as marine biogeochemistry and atmospheric ozone chemistry.

The development of the NZESM represents a step-change in model complexity for New Zealand science, and a major motivation for its development is to reduce Southern Hemisphere specific modelling problems such as the formation of Southern Ocean sea ice and Antarctic Bottom Water. The atmosphere, land surface, ocean and sea ice components of the model are already available in New Zealand. In the future, additional models representing (for example) ocean biogeochemistry and marine ice-sheets will also be added to the NZESM framework.

Over the next 5 years, the NZESM will be run to produce hindcasts for the past 150 years and projections for up to 200 years into the future. Such experiments will “enable New Zealanders to adapt, manage risk, and thrive in a changing climate”, which is the mission statement of the Deep South National Science Challenge. Over the next decade, the NZESM will be used in Earth System science research throughout New Zealand, both in terms of pure science and via communication of its results to New Zealanders.

• For more information on this paper and the New Zealand Earth System Model contact Jonny Williams: [email protected]

Recently, Deep South Challenge modellers met with experts from meteorological and research agencies in the UK, Australia, Korea, Philippines, India, USA, South Africa and New Zealand at a NIWA-hosted technical workshop on global climate modelling. 

The Global Model Evaluation and Development (GMED) workshop held in February was an opportunity for members of the Unified Model consortium to meet for three days to discuss common issues for mutual benefit to the consortium’s members.  The goals of the workshop broadly were to ‘to accelerate progress in global modelling’ (Unified Model Newsletter, February 2017).

The attendees all use the Unified Model – a powerful computer software able to numerically predict weather and model future climate scenarios.

Originally developed by the UK Met Office, the model is used by many around the world for short range and seasonal weather forecasting. It is also used for climate simulations on timescales up to centuries ahead.

NIWA employs the Unified Model for weather prediction, global and regional climate modelling,  and modelling the chemistry of the atmosphere.

Sean Milton from the UK Met Office plays a leading role in how the model is technically configured. In New Zealand for the first time, he says the workshop was a milestone event in bringing together the model’s partner community – all of whom contribute to evaluating the model across different timescales. 

“Workshops like these mean we’re able to tap into regional expertise in weather and climate. The global models being generated are now so big and complex that a partnership, consortium approach is needed more than ever. It’s simply too big for one agency to deal with alone.

“There are huge benefits from collaboration around diversity of ideas. The NIWA workshop was a good opportunity to have everyone in the same room talking about future strategies.”

That sentiment is echoed by Dr Olaf Morgenstern, who leads the Deep South Challenge’s Earth System Modelling and Prediction programme, who described the workshop as significant, highly focused and interactive.

Because global climate modelling is such an intricate field of study, another major topic of conversation at the workshop was systematic errors and biases in the model and how these can be remediated. The role of the Southern Ocean and its influence in the global weather system is a major motivator for the Deep South National Science Challenge, an initiative that is now actively contributing to the development of the Unified Model in its global climate configuration.

Dr Jonny Williams and Dr Vidya Varma, NIWA climate scientists who work on the Deep South Challenge, attended the workshop. Jonny said that the workshop was hugely beneficial, “So much of the work that is done between distantly separated member sites depends on personal relationships, and therefore we benefited greatly from meeting with colleagues whom we hadn’t seen recently or indeed had not met before.” He said,  “As well as the personal aspects of the meeting, there were various technical advances which will assist NZESM model development.”

Vidya said discussions at the workshop were useful for identifying and managing some key challenges facing the modelling community, and reduce the barriers of working remotely and globally. “The workshop helped in emphasising the ‘Southern Ocean biases’ as one of the priorities in the future model development activities, which would be crucial for the Deep South Challenge.”

More information about The Unified Model, including how it works, can be found at: metoffice.gov.uk/research/modelling-systems/unified-model

In November last year our colleagues at Antarctica New Zealand took Kiwi YouTube and social media star Jamie Curry to Antarctica.

On this once-in-a-lifetime adventure Jaime got to live alongside and meet scientists studying oceans, sea ice and climate. She has made a series of videos about her epic journey and what she learnt along the way.

The first video, that has reached 300,000 views in 7 hours, is one of four to be released over the next few weeks. It features Jamie and her interactions with some of the researchers studying atmospheric chemistry, ocean physics, and of course the local wildlife.

The initiative was a way of reaching a new generation; using new platforms to get climate-related information off the ice and into the worlds of the thousands of young people who communicate in quite a different way than the previous generation.

More on the Deep South Challenge’s connection to Jamie’s World. To follow Jamie’s journey check out Jamie’s World on YouTube.

With the recent storms and floods ransacking parts of New Zealand, Professor David Frame put pen to paper to discuss floods, attribution and the power of citizen science to help us understand our climate and be more prepared.

OPINION: Last week’s devastating floods over parts of the North Island are the latest in a series of extreme weather events that New Zealand has experienced in the past few years. Other explosive rainfall events have been felt in Nelson, Northland, Dunedin, Gisborne and Christchurch, to name just a few.

Scientists in New Zealand are trying to understand if and how New Zealand’s extreme events are linked to climate change. The question matters because hazards like floods and droughts bring large personal, social and economic impacts.

Probabilistic event attribution

The science that lets us examine the frequency of extreme weather events is called “probabilistic event attribution”. It investigates how the odds of specific events appear to have been affected, or not, by the changing climate.

The technique has parallels with epidemiological approaches in which doctors try to estimate the links between specific illnesses and causes, enabling them to make statements about the difference in the chances of a smoker and a non-smoker getting lung cancer.

Modelling climate events

In the climate change case, we attempt to understand the odds of specific events in a changing climate, versus the odds of those events in a climate without significant human influences.

This requires large numbers of climate model experiments; more than are feasible on a supercomputer. The only way we can get that many model runs is by harnessing the power of the internet through citizen science. The “weather@home” project, headquartered at the University of Oxford, in England, involves members of the public running climate models on their PCs.

Event attribution for New Zealand is conducted by Niwa and is funded by the Deep South National Science Challenge.

Large numbers of model runs are needed to get reasonable statistics regarding extreme events, which are of course rare by definition. The experiment compares simulations of the climate as it is now – with high levels of carbon dioxide and warm sea surface temperatures – with simulations of “what might have been” without the elevated levels of carbon dioxide and warming we have actually observed.

This comparison between the climate as it is today and as it might have been in a world without climate change lets us investigate how aspects of climate have changed, including the frequency of extreme weather events.

The jury is still out on the links between tropical cyclones and climate change, but some clear physical links are emerging.

Wet events getting wetter

One result common to mid-latitude climates such as New Zealand’s is that many of the wettest events are getting wetter. Broadly speaking, the cause seems to be that air parcels are getting warmer, and simple physics dictates that they can therefore support more water vapour.

When the time comes for these parcels of air to dump their moisture, they have more to dump.

Since the warmest and most moist parcels of air originate in the tropics, we need to look to the North for the source of these explosive downpours. This is consistent with a general pattern of the emergence of climate change, in which the tropics – which act as the engine of the climate system – show faster emerging changes in a relative sense than the more variable storm track regions.

But, as is usually the case in atmospheric science, the picture is not completely straightforward. Although we generally expect the heaviest events to get heavier, there appears to be significant regional variation within New Zealand. In some parts of the country, circulation changes may compete with the energy-related effect already described.

This means some areas may experience an overall decrease in extreme precipitation events. But the energy-related effects still apply. So when they do come, heavy rainfall events will probably be more damaging than those our parents and grandparents experienced, even in those areas that can on the whole expect fewer heavy rainfall events.

Impacts of droughts

Droughts are trickier, for a variety of fairly subtle reasons. A recent paper by Victoria University graduate and Oxford postdoctoral researcher Luke Harrington suggests that weather patterns such as those seen in the 2013 drought were 20 per cent more likely to occur in the present day than would have been the case without climate change.

The 2013 drought had a huge impact on New Zealand – according to Treasury estimates, it cost the New Zealand economy at least $1.3 billion.

Understanding emerging risks, and preparing for them

Events like floods and droughts are not just numbers in Treasury spreadsheets. They’re life-altering shocks to families and communities.

When I was 14, my home town of Invercargill was hit by terrible flooding. My dad was a building surveyor and builder. In the wake of the flood I helped him assess the damage.

I remember the rotten stench of the land in the wake of the retreating floodwaters, and the hideous, incongruous sight inside houses that looked perfectly fine above the high water mark, but which were rotten and warped and completely despoiled below that mark. Floods are eerie, devastating things which break hearts and ruin people’s livelihoods.

The reason we conduct research into near-term climate change risks is to work out how much and how fast things are changing. They are changing, and we know why. But now we need to quantify those changes. If we understand emerging climate risks, we can help make people less vulnerable, since better information and better preparedness can and should lead to better management of the risks.

That will be of little solace to those trying to reconstruct their lives in the wake of last week’s deluges, but it should help those seeking to avoid future damages.

Professor Dave Frame is director of the Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington. Read the original story on Stuff.co.nz

This is an exciting opportunity to apply your communications skills to a critical environmental science challenge facing the nation and be part of a highly regarded Communications team.

NIWA is New Zealand’s leading provider of freshwater, marine and atmospheric research and applied science services and host’s the Deep South National Science Challenge. This is a government-led multi-disciplinary and multi-agency research programme which aims to enable New Zealanders to adapt, manage, and thrive in a changing climate.

You will be responsible for the ongoing review, refinement and delivery of the Challenge’s media and communications strategy in partnership with stakeholders and Challenge parties. You’ll play a key role in managing the brand and reputation of the Challenge.

You will have relevant tertiary qualifications or equivalent industry experience. You will have executed successful communications – including events – for large organisations, be an excellent writer and able to communicate with a wide range of audiences using a variety of channels. Experience working within the science/government sector would be an advantage.

We are offering a competitive remuneration package, free on-site carparking and the opportunity to be part of a professional and supportive team.

For the full role description and application details visit the recruitment advertisement at Science New Zealand

Big thanks go to Maggie Barrett from stuck.co.nz for helping to get the system to Christchurch within a very short timeframe!

Scientists from the University of Canterbury and NIWA are looking forward to sending a ceilometer out into the Southern Ocean this week, to measure the altitude of the bottom of clouds. It has been a hectic week for the group – logistical issues surprisingly time-consuming and complex for any Antarctic mission – trying to remove the system from the NIWA vessel RV Tangaroa after delays due to thick fog in Wellington. The ceilometer was then couriered down to Christchurch to be checked and then installed on the US Antarctic Program’s Nathaniel B. Palmer. Principal Investigator Adrian McDonald would like to especially thank Maggie Barrett from courier service stuck.co.nz for going above and beyond to send the system down to Christchurch at very short notice – your help was much appreciated!

The data that comes from the celiometer will be used in conjunction with other data and models to reduce biases in the representation of clouds and aerosols in the New Zealand Earth System Model. This research is a part of core Deep South Challenge funding, under the Processes and Observations Programme.

For more information, please visit:

• Clouds and Aerosols Project
• NSF website on Nathaniel B Palmer

Header photo credit: Dave Allen, NIWA

We need to better understand the interconnections of climate change says Dr Judy Lawrence, researcher at Victoria University and lead of two Deep South Challenge projects.

Imagine you’re a local kiwifruit farmer, says Dr Judy Lawrence, and the consistently warmer weather means the harvest season has come early.

“If you have higher temperatures earlier, it means you’ve got to harvest earlier and cool your fruit for longer. This means higher energy costs, which reduces your profit. And you’ve got a greater potential for spoiling the product, and therefore market demand may not be met.

“Optimum temperature zones may change, leading to regional impacts on the economy, which flow onto social impacts.

“This is just one scenario that demonstrates the cascading impacts of climate change.”

Dr Lawrence is a research fellow at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington working on a number of future-focused projects to better understand the scale and scope of climate change implications across the country.

“We know that the impacts of increases in temperature, floods and sea-level rise trickle down within and across sectors affecting people, assets and our social and economic interactions,” says Dr Lawrence.

“And as these changes become more frequent, like heavy rainfall, and as the sea-levels rise and the effects increase from storm surges, we’re going to have less time to recover from them—which will also have cumulative consequences.

“We need to make sure that we’re thinking about the interconnections. The impacts themselves cascade, but policy responses can also cascade if the interconnections are not factored in.”

Mid-last year, a group led by Dr Lawrence was awarded nearly $300,000 from the Deep South Challenge to investigate how different climate change impacts interact, who is affected, where inter-dependencies and co-dependencies occur, and how far impacts might extend across multiple sectors.

“We make decisions today that are going to be around for a long time. We need to know where the impacts of rising sea levels and extreme weather events will fall, to understand how we will prioritise them.”

New funding for decision making tools

This month Dr Lawrence starts leading another Deep South Challenge-funded project, which was awarded nearly $350,000.

In it she will work alongside National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and Landcare Research scientists to develop new, practical tools to aid decision-making to anticipate, avoid and manage climate change impacts.

Dr Lawrence says this comes after calls from local government, which is responsible for considering the effects of climate change.

“The project will help to enable decision-making under uncertain and changing conditions. We can anticipate problems by testing our options and different pathways against a range of scenarios.

“By doing that we can identify under what conditions policy options and pathways might fail, which enables us to set up signals, to warn people, and trigger points where decisions will need to be made. Decisions can then become more flexible and more resilient.

“For example—many of New Zealand’s airports, such as Wellington, Napier, Nelson and Dunedin, are located in low lying areas. How will these facilities cope with rising sea levels? We’re trying to get a better fix on when people or organisations will need to change tack and adapt.”

Building capability and resilience in a changing climate

This work builds on research Dr Lawrence led on the Climate Change Impacts & Implications (CCII) research project, funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The report recommends a stronger focus on the effect of climate change on pests and diseases management, and on building capability to address changing climate impacts.

Last year Dr Lawrence was appointed by Minister for Climate Change Issues Paula Bennett to co-chair the Government’s Climate Change Adaptation Technical Working Group, advising on how New Zealand can adapt to future climate changes.

Dr Lawrence is co-chairing the group alongside Penny Nelson, Deputy Secretary Sector Strategy at the Ministry for the Environment.

“We’re currently doing a stocktake of what’s been done on climate change adaptation, both in New Zealand and overseas,” says Dr Lawrence.

“Then we will identify a range of options for how New Zealand can build resilience through adaptation to climate change, identify how adaptation can be managed and what the priorities are.

“A lot of countries already have adaptation plans that coordinate economy-wide actions so you could say this work in New Zealand is well overdue. It’s a challenging project to be working on that links research and policy.”

Original article published by Victoria University of Wellington

The Deep South Challenge is excited to be partnering with ANTARCTICA – while you were sleeping which is showing at Auckland Museum as part of the 2017 Auckland Arts Festival.

Auckland Museum will become the canvas for a full-scale, 360-degree projection of a majestic Antarctic iceberg

Friday 24, Saturday 25, Sunday 26 March

8.30PM-11PM, 45-minute loop

Visual artist Joseph Michael has collaborated with composer Rhian Sheehan to create an immersive multi-sensory installation that translates the scale and awe of Antarctica. Listen to the ice crack and drip, creak and groan as colossal sections of ice calve off, set to a dramatic sound score.

Experience the sights and sounds in a taster for the event NZHerald – New Zealanders to meet Antarctica’s Icebergs

How is the Deep South Challenge involved?

Antarctica is beautiful and impressive. It also contains important information about processes occurring around the ice, ocean, and clouds that are critical for an improved understanding of our future climate. The Deep South Challenge is helping create opportunities for visitors to the show to ask questions and learn more about this research. We will be present in a number of ways:

Featured in Radio New Zealand podcasts:

A series of podcasts called Voice of the Icebergs is being broadcast in the lead-up to this event. The second of these, Revelation, features the Challenge Director, Dr Mike Williams, talking about his research into icebergs.

Key partner in the Auckland Museum Smart Talk

Saturday 25 March, 6:30PM – 7:45PM

The Deep South Challenge has helped to frame the ANTARCTICA – while you were sleeping: Smart Talk panel discussion, which is part of a regular series hosted by Auckland Museum. The panel features experts from art, science, policy and business discussing possibilities for adaptation and collaboration in the light of our changing climate.

If you’re in the area and would like a ticket to this event, courtesy of the Deep South Challenge, please email [email protected] by Wednesday the 15th of March – alternately book your tickets online at the link above. 

Antarctic Zone

The Challenge will have a presence every night in the “Antarctic Zone” – pop by and say hi from 7pm each night!

Preparing New Zealand’s water stores for a warmer climate is a major focus of new research projects just awarded more than $2 million.

The funding, for five studies, is part of the Deep South National Science Challenge, which aims to help Kiwis adapt to the effects that climate change will bring, among them extreme weather events, drought, changes in typical weather patterns and sea level rise.

One of the new projects will improve future projections of glacier and snow melt from alpine regions.

While warming would lead to loss of frozen water resources, scientists say the magnitude, timing and distribution of changes in the meltwater remained unclear.

Yet mountain rivers in both islands feed our largest hydro-electric power schemes, providing critical water for irrigation, especially during drought.

Melting snow and ice may also cause increased flooding risk.

Researchers will develop and apply new computer modelling tools to simulate snow and ice responses to different climate change scenarios, and make projections of future snow and ice cover, and resultant run-off from alpine catchments.

Another project will attempt to map out the potential effects of climate change on New Zealand’s entire hydrological cycle, across a time scale stretching to the end of the century.

Hydrological states and fluxes will be analysed to forecast major potential changes and implications they’ll have for agricultural water resources, hydropower potential and flooding.

A third study, beginning next month, draws on climate change data to better inform future investments around water storage, with an initial focus on Canterbury.

Like the Government’s other 10 National Science Challenges, the effort combines the firepower of the country’s top scientists, bringing together researchers from Victoria University, Niwa, Scion, Landcare Research, University of Otago, Plant and Food Research, AgResearch and GNS Science.

“We are at an exciting point in the development of the challenge and are looking forward to seeing these projects start,” challenge director Dr Mike Williams said.

“This work will look at some of the climate-related impacts on essential resources and are key components in setting future priorities.”

A core part of the challenge will be boosting the use of the New Zealand Earth System Model, a world-class numerical tool to simulate current climate and make projections of future climates with different scenarios of future global greenhouse gas emissions.

In recent years, scientists have reported more defined projections around what climate change will mean for New Zealand.

One study, published last year, found there was already a 50 per cent greater chance of exceptionally high pressure systems occurring over New Zealand in summer than was the case a century ago.

The same paper showed that, due to changes in climate in the past 130 years, in response to greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion, weather patterns such as those seen in 2013’s $1.3 billion drought were 20 per cent more likely to occur in the present day than in the late 1800s.

New Zealand and climate change

• Under present projections, the sea level around New Zealand is expected to rise between 50cm and 100cm this century, while temperatures could also increase by several degrees by 2100.
• Climate change would bring more floods (about two-thirds of Kiwis live in areas prone to flooding); make our freshwater problems worse and put more pressure on rivers and lakes; acidify our oceans; put even more species at risk and bring problems from the rest of the world.
• Climate change is also expected to result in more large storms compounding the effects of sea level rise.
• New Zealand, which reported a 23 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2014, has pledged to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels and 11 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030.

Read the related Deep South Challenge press release

Read the original NZ Herald story

Jamie Morton – NZ Herald

View the article here: New Zealand’s Next Top Model

Online hub for climate impacts and implications

The article is also the leading story on a new online hub that we have catalysed, which brings together high-quality NZ journalism about climate change in one place: Climate Hub on New Zealand Geographic

We hope that this will become a really useful resource for public engagement, educational purposes, and sector engagement.

Contact us for more copies

We would also like to send physical copies of the magazine out to any friends of the DSC who have opportunities to share them with associates/ networks – we are hoping these features will also become a useful “entry point” for more tailored discussions about the DSC. If you would like some physical copies, please email the Engagement Team and include in your email (a) your relationship with the DSC, (b) how many copies you would like, and (c) where you will be able to distribute these.