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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
The Deep South National Science Challenge today announced funding totalling approximately $2 million for five new research projects to help New Zealanders better understand their future climate.
The funding is part of the Deep South National Science Challenge which is tasked with enabling New Zealanders to adapt, manage risk and thrive in a changing climate.
This funding round is focused on the potential impacts and implications of climate change for New Zealand to support planning and decision-making around extreme weather events, drought, changes in typical weather patterns and sea level rise.
Challenge director Dr Mike Williams said it was crucial that New Zealand was adaptable and resilient in the face of climate change.
“The new research projects that the Challenge has funded will help us understand how climate change will affect New Zealanders, for example, by understanding future changes in land use and water availability”
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.
While the projects are funded by the Deep South Challenge, they are undertaken by researchers across a range of institutions including Victoria University, University of Otago, NIWA, SCION and Landcare Research.
These projects will be delivered alongside the Engagement and Vision Mātauranga programmes that will connect the science to the experiences, needs, and decision-making processes of New Zealanders.
Dr Williams said the new projects represent the development of the final part of the Challenge, the Impacts and Implications Programme.
“We are at an exciting point in the development of the Challenge and are looking forward to seeing these projects start. This work will look at some of the climate related impacts on essential resources and are key components in setting future priorities.”
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.
As New Zealand’s Scott Base celebrates 60 years of science on ice, Veronika Meduna writes for The Spinoff looking at one of Antarctica’s most puzzling features – the wayward behaviour of sea ice around the continent. Her article features a Deep South Challenge researchers, and the work they are doing to understand the physics of the sea ice.
Every southern winter, Antarctica doubles in size. As the sun sets on the continent, the surface of the ocean around it freezes, kicking off the world’s most spectacular seasonal transformation. By spring, this apron of ice begins to break up again and by this time of the year, it largely retreats back to the coast.
For nearly four decades, as long as satellites have been watching these growth-collapse cycles from space, Antarctica’s sea ice has, on average, been growing further out from the continent, bucking the trend of vanishing sea ice seen in the Arctic and baffling scientists. Then, this season, everything changed.
During September and October 2016, in the hottest year on record globally and in New Zealand, both poles showed record low levels of sea ice, with millions of square kilometres of ice missing when compared with historic average values. Even in the Arctic, which has lost 40 per cent of sea ice since the 1980s and where this most recent development could be understood as an acceleration of an existing trend, the degree of sea ice loss is troubling scientists. In Antarctica, which saw a 4 per cent growth of sea ice up until 2014, this is exceptional.
Sherry Ott, collecting an air flask sample from the Spirit of Enderby cruise ship (Heritage Expeditions) on a breezy Southern Ocean day en route from Invercargill to Antarctica
Radio-carbon researcher Jocelyn Turnbull from GNS science outlines how her research informs the New Zealand Earth System Model.
Jocelyn: We all know that it comes from burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), which produce carbon dioxide, which goes into the atmosphere, which makes the world warmer. What you may not know is that of the carbon dioxide we produce from fossil fuels, only about half stays in the atmosphere. This has been remarkably consistent since the start of the industrial revolution – each year, only about half the carbon dioxide we produce stays in the atmosphere, even as the actual amount of carbon dioxide we produce keeps increasing each year.
So where does the other half go? We know that it isn’t escaping into space, so it must be going into the land or into the oceans, or both. The answer is that Planet Earth is doing us a massive favour, or perhaps just trying to save herself, by taking up that carbon dioxide into both land and oceans. The million dollar question is what drives the uptake of carbon into these sinks, and how might that change in the future? Will these sinks “fill up”, causing a massive acceleration of global warming? Or by learning how they work, can we perhaps help these sinks to take up even more carbon and reduce global warming?
It turns out that the Southern Ocean is the most important of these “carbon sinks”, taking up by far the most carbon dioxide of any region of the world. But we scientists are in the midst of an argument about this. As the climate has warmed, the westerly winds over the Southern Ocean (the roaring forties and furious fifties that we Kiwis know so well) have increased. Research based on measurements of carbon dioxide over the Southern Ocean says that the increase in the westerly winds has caused the Southern Ocean to do a poorer job of removing carbon from the atmosphere. Other studies based on model simulations of ocean processes give an opposite answer; that the Southern Ocean has been getting better at taking up carbon. The problem is that we just don’t have enough measurements in the Southern Ocean or the atmosphere above it, because as you might have noticed, the Southern Ocean is the least populated part of the world, and it’s expensive and difficult to make measurements there.
We are embarking on a new project between GNS Science and NIWA, funded by the Deep South National Science Challenge and a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden grant. We collect air samples from Arrival Heights in Antarctica, Baring Head in Wellington, on ships travelling between New Zealand and Antarctica, and tree rings from New Zealand’s Sub-Antarctic islands to make a suite of new measurements and model simulations over the Southern Ocean and resolve the argument – is the Southern Ocean carbon sink sinking or swimming?
Jocelyn Turnbull showing off a tree core collected from a southern rata specimen at Hardwicke, Auckland Island in January 2016. The tree corer can be seen on the left. Image by Erin Whitehead
Content provided by Jocelyn Turnbull, GNS Science. To contact Jocelyn please refer to her organisational bio at GNS
“NeSI is providing the supercomputing infrastructure on which we are producing climate simulations, both globally and using a regional climate model. You cannot operate an Earth System Model without a supercomputer.”
Climate change is widely seen as a leading problem of our times. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its 2013 Assessment Report, states that “human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.” The impressive ability of climate models to capture many aspects of the climate system has made them the cornerstone of all IPCC assessment reports; they are widely used to quantify the human influence on climate. However, the Earth is a highly complex system, and there remain numerous challenges to improving climate models. Three competing tensions act to increase the computational cost of running a climate model: Firstly, various processes are simplified or absent in models; addressing this requires us to increase the complexity of models. Secondly, the representation of climate usually improves with improved resolution, so there is a tendency to operate these models at as high a resolution as possible. Thirdly, climate is subject to an element of chaos. Therefore large ensembles of simulations are needed to accurately represent the most likely climate evolution and particularly extreme events such as severe storms, floods, or heat waves. For these three reasons, climate modellers often encounter limitations imposed by the computational resource at their disposal, and climate modelling can be the main motivation for upgrading ageing computing infrastructure.
