We invite you to the first installation of the online DSC seminar series.
Professor Pat Langhorne has been involved in the field of sea ice research for over 30 years and is a world expert on the topic. She has participated in more than 20 research expeditions to Antarctica and is currently the Principal Investigator on the Deep South funded core research project Targeted observation and process-informed modelling of Antarctic sea ice.
If you are interested in knowing more about this research and how it fits into the Deep South Challenge, or its relevance to your own work and interests, join us. There will be time for questions after the presentation.
The latest funding has been announced by the Deep South National Science Challenge to enable New Zealanders to adapt, manage risk, and thrive in a changing climate.
Working out which roads, buildings and railway lines across New Zealand could be affected by flooding due to climate change, is the subject of a new research project being funded by the Deep South National Science Challenge.
The Challenge, which is tasked with enabling New Zealanders to adapt, manage risk and thrive in a changing climate, has announced funding for four new projects totalling more than $1 million.
Ryan Paulik, hazards analyst at the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) is leading one of the projects to identify how flooding due to sea level rise or extreme weather events will affect infrastructure and buildings. Mr Paulik says flooding caused by rainfall is one of New Zealand’s most frequently damaging and disruptive natural hazards and is expected to increase under climate change scenarios.
However, there is little information available to central and local government on exactly what is at risk under different climate change scenarios. Information was urgently needed to help identify high risk areas and prioritise mitigation work.
Scientific models will be produced across New Zealand for practitioners to identify how flood risk may evolve in their area using RiskScape software developed by NIWA and GNS Science.
The Deep South Challenge is also funding other research to support its mission. In a project led by Waikato University it will look at reshaping the future of risk management in New Zealand. NIWA and Auckland University will collaborate in oceanographic research from RV Tangaroa in the Ross Sea. The final successfully- funded project will be undertaken by Massey University and will look into risk management planning for climate change impacts on Māori coastal ecosystems and economies. This will complement their previous Challenge funded research looking into adaptation strategies to address climate change impacts for coastal Maori communities.
Understanding how climate change might affect New Zealanders
Challenge director Dr Mike Williams said the new projects would expand the reach of the Challenge and provide crucial information to help New Zealand in the face of climate change.
“The new research projects that the Challenge has funded will help us understand how climate change might affect New Zealanders, for example, by knowing more about what is at risk from increased flooding and sea level rise.”
Each of the four projects will receive between $200,000 and $300,000.
Central to the Challenge is strengthening the links and interactions with the New Zealand Earth System Model. This world-class numerical model will simulate current climate and make projections of future climates with different scenarios of future global greenhouse gas emissions.
Ultimately the Deep South Challenge will help advance understanding of Southern Hemisphere influences on the global climate and give New Zealanders a greater level of certainty in the face of a changing climate.
“We are particularly looking forward to seeing these projects under way as they will help us set future priorities at a local level,” Dr Williams said.
The Deep South National Science Challenge is one of 11 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment-funded initiatives aimed at taking a more strategic and collaborative approach to science investment.
For more information:
Dr Mike Williams – Director, Deep South National Science Challenge
Join us for this free event to hear from artist and researcher Dr Huhana Smith on adaptation strategies to address climate change impacts on coastal Māori communities.
This talk will extend on the Kei Uta collective project Whakatairangitia rere ki uta, rere ki tai (Proclaim it to the land, proclaim it to the sea) that features in our current exhibition This Time of Useful Consciousness.
It is the culmination of a Deep South Challenge Research Project, that brought together scientific and creative practices with a mātauranga Māori approach, focused on Kuku in the Horowhenua region.
One Deep South Challenge project, within the Vision Mātauranga programme, has been exploring adaptation strategies to address climate change impacts on coastal Māori communities.
Using design methodology, this project takes a serious look at the potential economic risks to climate sensitive industries. The final hui and exhibit offers a model of participation and engagement that can assist communities to understand and move forward in a changing climate. Artist and researcher, Dr Huhana Smith, who has lead this team for 18 months shows us how the path forward can be a positive one, which continues to sustain the people and make dynamic use of the land.
Credit: Jo Bailey
Adaptation strategies for coastal Māori communities
Climate change will change conditions that will affect traditional land-use and practises. This project collaborated with local iwi and hapū to address the implications of climate change on two Māori coastal farms and a whānau trust, and consider the cultural, economic and ecological issues to develop culturally-appropriate adaptive options moving forward. These practices will help Māori farming communities be more self-reliant, less vulnerable and therefore more resilient. Huhana explains, “we’ve been building the ideas of what iwi and hapū would like to see from a cultural context, and an economic context, with the designers bringing their ideas and their thoughts and processes to the projects. We’ve been able to get some good cross-cultural dialogue and collaborative work.”
Science+Design+Art – an exhibition of adaptive strategies
As an artist and former senior curator, Huhana is well acquainted with the power of visual images to engage with the audience, and recently produced a visually rich exhibition Whakatairangitia, Rere ki uta, Rere ki tai, held in Kuku in March, reporting this work back to the community. This was not a regular research report or community event. The science, the process and the potential future strategies were presented to the community, land owners and trust members in an exhibition held on the farm, by the Kuku Stream in a disused milking shed with surrounding farm buildings to provide the real-life backdrop for the effects of climate change on this community.
Masters students at Victoria University’s School of Architecture engaged in the project (supported by professional firms Studio Pacific and Isthmus Group, Wellington) as a case study that incorporated both understandings of kaupapa Māori and climate change risks. Professor Penny Allen said, “The students were asked to think carefully about how climate change was going to affect those coastal lands, and what that might look like in hundred years and to create a vision for rejuvenation within the constraints of climate change, thereby helping Māori farmers and shareholders adapt in an economically viable way.”
During the design process, many experts were invited to talk to the students and discuss things that might impact their design solutions. An integral component was spending time listening to the people and exploring the land in the Horowhenua. For Masters student Yota Kojima this was essential to the creative process. “The site is currently covered in pasture, with wetlands, streams and rivers. We were asked to look at climate change issues such as sea level rise as a catalyst for environmental restoration and more importantly, cultural restoration.” Yota focussed on Māori cultural norms for inspiration. “The place of food in Māori culture is much like other cultures such as Japanese. It’s more than just feeding the community, but also has cultural and spiritual associations.”
The design process raised many possibilities and alternatives, that could see the people moving from dairy to other types of farming such as algae farming, green lipped mussel or fish hatcheries. Land based options included sustainable cash crops, such as flax and mānuka honey from bees.
Vision Mātauranga
The hui also provided an opportunity for the six Vision Mātauranga project leaders to come together from various parts of New Zealand, learn from each other and share challenges and progress. Each leader was given time at the hui to talk about their projects from water security in the northern regions, capturing traditional weather and climate forecasting expertise in in the South Island, and the opportunities for using narratives of Māori navigation to Antarctica to shape climate change conversations.
Darren Ngaru King, the programme lead for the Vision Mātauranga Programme in the Deep South Challenge, is proud of what the programme has achieved in a short space of time. “This is the first time that there have been six concurrent science projects focussed on ways that iwi, hapū and Māori business will deal with climate change and adaptation.”
A project of hope
Huhana calls it a project of hope, that focusses on challenges as a catalyst for positive change. “All in all, this project is about how a range of specialists can come together really well with iwi and hapū and help them cope with something like climate change. It’s not just the Horowhenua and Kāpiti Coast. It will affect all of New Zealand. And you know, together, that expertise and willingness to work closely together with help forge a better understanding and accelerate the adaptations we need to put into place now.”
We all have something to learn from tikanga Māori and the paradigm of kaitiakitanga that carries a responsibility of active stewardship for future generations, whilst providing for today.
Now at The Dowse, Lower Hutt
The next iteration of Whakatairangitia, Rere ki uta, Rere ki tai is now on display at the Dowse Art Museum until 30 July 2017, as part of the exhibition
A talk given by Penny Allen and Huhana Smith will take place on Saturday 20 May 2017 at 3pm
Lindsay Poutama from Te Iwi o Ngāti Tukorehe ki te Tonga welcomes the guests to the exhibition. Standing with him are (top left) Dr Huhana Smith with the project team to celebrate the completion of the research and a successful exhibition. Photo credit: Kate Turner
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.”
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.
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.
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.
