We talked to Dr Mike Williams about his new role as the Deep South Challenge Director, the challenges and opportunities and his recent research trip to Antarctica.

You’ve been in the Director’s sea now, for three months – what attracted you to the Deep South Challenge?

I have been involved with the about the Deep South Challenge since its earliest days as the leader of the Processes and Observations Programme and part of the Science Leadership Team. I’m passionate about this issue because it’s going to affect our children, our grandchildren and New Zealand society for generations to come.  The Deep South Challenge is about starting now, understanding what changes are likely to happen and in what time-frames so all New Zealanders can make better decisions around things like land-use and infrastructure, and other things that we need to plan for.  It’s a privilege to lead such an important science project and to ensure it delivers for all New Zealanders. 

What have been some great things? And some challenges?

The best thing so far is seeing the Challenge established and moving forward. Over the last few years we have been slowly building the Challenge components, and next year we will see the final aspects of the core Challenge programme coming together. The biggest challenge for me is getting to grips with all the other programmes in the Challenge, and ensuring that they work together so together they can be more than the sum of the parts.  What’s exciting is that are not only building on the traditional science expertise in New Zealand, we are also drawing new research communities together to build new integrative research programmes.  This of course is a challenge but we’re trying to reach out to communities, businesses and other stakeholders so they can use the full spectrum of New Zealand’s climate research knowledge to understand how climate change will impact on New Zealand, what the financial risks and implications are, but also where the opportunities might be.

What are some of the projects that you’re really excited about?

I’m still really excited about the physical science where we are observing and understanding processes and linking this understanding to building and establishing an earth system model that utilizes New Zealand’s strong heritage with ocean, sea-ice and atmospheric physics and Antarctica.  But I’m proud of the strong scientific research that we have built in all our programmes.  It’s an ambitious Challenge as it tackles a variety of disciplines from ocean physics to decision making, and needs us to understand the range of impacts changing climate will have across industry and communities.

The new work I’m excited about is the series of dialogues that we are developing in the Impacts and Implications programme supported by the Engagement programme.  I think these will give us a real opportunity to listen to various sectors, hear what makes their decisions complex and open up ideas for the research that is needed to help these sectors make decisions in a changing climate.  They also have the potential to include various communities into the conversation so enabling also bring the consequences of climate change to the public.  In this way we can make the new technology and research relevant to New Zealanders and the decisions they make.

Tell us about your research in Antarctica, and how it’s connected to the Deep South Challenge

We were doing field work on the sea ice of McMurdo Sound, near New Zealand’s Scott Base, to validate remote sensing measurements observed with airborne equipment. We do this by comparing the airborne measurements to direct physical measurements of sea ice. I was leading the ocean component of the programme while my colleagues were taking ice and snow thickness and structure measurements. But the key part of our project was to test fly an electromagnetic induction bird (EM-bird), new technology that that is towed about 100 metres under a plane. This is the first time this has been done in Antarctica, and is the key step for us in extending our measurements to a wider region of Antarctica as this equipment will be able to go further than scientists can on foot or by towing the EM-bird under a helicopter.   

This work is a vital component of the Deep South National Science Challenge because Antarctic sea ice has not been well modelled in global climate models. Typically climate models have expected sea ice to retreat over the last few decades, the opposite trend to that seen in the observations. Sea ice is a key controller of climate processes in the Deep South region, so getting sea ice right in climate and earth system models is really important, and something we can only do with wider observations of sea ice. These observations underpin a new understanding of processes that we can incorporate into the New Zealand Earth System Model (NZESM) to better represent sea ice. This will be a potentially be major contribution to the international modelling effort.

This is part of a research programme with the Universities of Otago and Canterbury and also with Canadian and German collaborators. Find out more about the Deep South Challenge sea-ice modelling project.

It’s been a year since climate scientist Dr Jonny Williams ventured to New Zealand to join the Deep South Challenge as part of the Earth System Modelling & Prediction team.  We asked him about his work, his background and his first year in New Zealand.

I’m climate scientist – my role, which is funded by the Deep South Challenge and hosted at the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) is to develop and document the New Zealand Earth System Model or NZESM. I also support other users of the model and act as a liaison between New Zealand and the international members of our modelling consortium, which includes the weather and climate agencies of the UK, Australia, South Korea and South Africa.

I come from England, originally, and after my PhD studies in solar energy conversion at Bath University, I worked at the Met Office in Exeter (the UK equivalent of the weather and climate work of New Zealand’s MetService and NIWA) as part of the climate model development team. After this I worked for an environmental consultancy firm in Bristol where I worked on everything from carbon footprint analysis, the effects of marine planning law on birds and tourism to the environmental impacts of landfill and product reuse. After this I moved to Bristol University where I spent five years working on paleo-climate simulations of the extreme warm climates of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods using climate models; when dinosaurs ruled the Earth!

The role with the Deep South Challenge appealed in many ways. Simply the ability to experience life in New Zealand was a factor due to the incredible beauty and natural spectacle of the country but two other factors outweighed this. The first one was the knowledge that I would be working in small teams compared to many of those that I was used to. This presents challenges, for sure, but it also provides opportunities to ‘muck in’ and be involved with a much more varied day-to-day workflow. The second was the opportunity to work in an oceanic region which, geographically speaking, has a huge influence on global climate but which is relatively poorly understood compared to, say, the North Atlantic. The Southern Ocean, which is one of our main focal areas, presents huge challenges for climate scientists due to the difficulty in taking measurements in such a vast, unforgiving area of open ocean. However, the opportunity to work with a group of modellers, observationalists and Antarctic explorers was too good to pass up.

I have been fortunate in my time at NIWA, that I have travelled from my base in Wellington to Auckland and Queenstown in order to present at conferences and to Melbourne to meet new collaborators at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. I have also engaged with new colleagues at GNS and the MetService and will be doing so, for example, at the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council in the coming few months to discuss future effects of climate change and weather extremes on a local level. I’m enjoying working in a greater variety of professional situations compared to my previous roles; although I am primarily employed to develop the NZESM, I am able to engage to communities outside of my academic ‘comfort zone’. This can be challenging but it makes for a varied and interesting role in the Deep South Challenge.

Congratulations to Dr Judy Lawrence, who has been appointed co-chair of a specialised team to advise the Government on how New Zealand can adapt to climate change, announced by Hon Paula Bennett, Minister for Climate Change Issues. 

Dr Lawrence is based at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University leads a new project within the Deep South National Science Challenge. The project aims to better understand the scale and scope of cascading climate change impacts and implications across New Zealand. In particular, how they interact, who is affected, where inter-dependencies and co-dependencies occur, and how far impacts and implications might extend across multiple sectors. 

Read more

Press release: Climate change adaptation experts appointed

Project page: Dr Lawrence’s work in the Deep South Challenge

Public Talk: On the emergence of unusual, unfamiliar and unknown climates  – patterns of change and why it matters.

The concept of ‘Time of Emergence’ (ToE), which characterises when significant signals of climate change will emerge from existing variability, is a useful and increasingly common metric.  Professor Dave Frame and PhD candidate Luke Harrington from the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute recently presented their latest findings at Victoria University. Professor Frame reflects on the essential messages.

What is the most important message that your current research is revealing?

For several years scientists have understood that climate change emerges above local climate variability at different rates in different places, emerging fastest in tropical regions and a lot more slowly in the storm tracks and polar regions. This pattern corresponds with a lot of important climate impacts, such as extreme hot periods, impacts on certain crops and so on. In the new research we’re starting to examine how robust these patterns are and what the patterns look like under different climate scenarios and in different models, factoring in issues such as population. At this stage it’s still a work in progress, but some pretty strong regularities are emerging.

What would you like decision makers to take away from this research?

The need to pay more attention to climate change on the timescales of decades, and to be aware of the speed of emerging climate change in the Pacific. Some of the largest changes in terms of shifts in the distribution of seasonal or annual temperatures are occurring between us and the equator. This affects not only New Zealand but also countries with whom we have close ties.

This work has been submitted for peer review and publication and we will report further in due course.

For more information email the New Zealand Climate Change Research Insitute

Two Climathon teams attracted the acknowledgement and ongoing support of the Deep South Challenge Engagement team whose goal it is to enable New Zealanders to make informed decisions in regard to climate change.  The awards were presented by Rebecca Mills, strategist and Board member of the Deep South Challenge Board.  

For the second year running, the Deep South National Science Challenge has sponsored and supported the Wellington event in an international initiative to get people thinking about mitigation and adaption in a changing climate.  Major Justin Lester opened the event outlining Wellington’s unique challenges such as its significant reclaimed land and vulnerability to sea level rise, also its adaptability; Wellington is a great city with potential to mobilise public support.  Dave Frame, Professor of climate change at Victoria University and immediate past director of the Challenge, gave a whirlwind intro to set the scene and the challenge, noting sea level rise as the most significant challenge to Wellington’s coastal capital by 2100. He highlighted the power of citizens to make a difference from the ground up and public action.

Ideas to help Wellington address climate change ranged from adaption ideas such rethinking the city’s infrastructure, to activities that would help reduce waste that reach our landfills therefore reducing carbon emissions.  The Deep South Challenge was particularly interested in projects that focussed on community engagement and enabled informed decision making.  The Deep South Challenge also offered further mentoring and potential funding for projects that engaged with the public and helped them make climate related decisions.  Two teams stood out with this kind of goal – one team will be exploring the possibility of a Wellington based online magazine to help people understand climate issues, and what they can do.  The other team will look at developing a social application to connect interested people with climate related activities – noted the Tinder for climate.  The Engagement programme, is particularly interested in using a range of technologies to reaching new audiences.

Climathon 2016 – in the media

Our Changing World – Alison Ballance reviews the Climathon on Radio New Zealand’s Our Changing World. You can listen to the podcast here.

One News – Sean Hogan also attended and prepared a news report. View the One News video.

Access Radio – Prior to the Climathon event, Emily Grinter from VicLink and Bart De Vries from Motif were interviewed by Access Radio to outline the plan for the event. Listen to the Access Radio podcast.

Online climate magazine

Collaborate for change

In collaboration with the University of Otago Division of Sciences, the Deep South Challenge’s Vision Mātauranga science programme is offering two Master’s Scholarships.

The scholarships have been established to build cross-disciplinary research capability and capacity in global change studies to help meet the emerging demands of increasingly complex social, economic, political and bio-physical system changes facing Māori and wider Aotearoa/New Zealand society. Projects are sought that will contribute to the following four research themes:

Theme 1

Understanding climate change – linkages, pressure points and potential responses

Theme 2

Exploring adaptation options for Māori communities

Theme 3

Assistance to Māori businesses to aid decision-making and long-term sustainability

Theme 4

Products, services and systems derived from mātauranga Māori*

* Includes: Te Reo Māori and Tikanga MāoriFor more information including the application process please visit the Otago University Scholarships page

Last Thursday, social media star Jamie Curry set off to Antarctica, courtesy of Antarctica New Zealand.  Rhian Salmon, Science Lead for Engagement, explores the relationship between Jamie and the Deep South Challenge.

From a communications perspective, she’s an interesting and bold choice – now twenty, she has been a rising star online since she was 16 years old and has an especially strong following from people like herself – young, social media savvy, and possibly not overly interested in the details of climate science. From the perspective of Antarctica New Zealand, who are rapidly ramping up their social media presence and activity, she’s a great fit – she has 1.3 million followers on You Tube and nearly 10 million followers on Facebook, and most of them are in the 16 to 24-year-old demographic that has been identified as a target audience for their communications.

Find out more about Antarctica New Zealand

So what about the Deep South Science Challenge? Why are we connected with this, and what is our role?

Well, firstly, it’s important to make the point that Jamie is being hosted courtesy of Antarctica New Zealand – her trip was planned long before we got involved. While she’s there, however, she’ll be meeting researchers who are studying atmospheric physics, sea ice processes, and ocean dynamics… all of which are highly relevant to Deep South Challenge research. Information collected in these observational field studies is critical for better understanding key processes in the climate system, which we need in order to make better predictions about future climate, and therefore be able to make more informed climate-related decisions about our future.

The Deep South Challenge models this journey from data to decision-making. The Processes and Observations programme supports research into physical processes that, once better understood, will improve the skill of the New Zealand Earth System Model (NZESM) and hence climate prediction for New Zealand. These improved predictions, in turn, enable us to better understand the Impacts and Implications of climate change for New Zealand. The Vision Mātauranga and Engagement programmes use this information to build capacity so that New Zealanders can make more informed decisions about the future.

Back to Jamie Curry

Many of these climate processes mentioned above are best studied in Antarctica and the southern ocean – where Jamie is right now. When we heard that she was going to the ice, we invited her to visit Wellington on her way. While there, she visited the NIWA supercomputer, which is critical for building and running the NZESM; she went on a roadie to Baring Head, to learn more about measurements of CO2; and she stopped off on the way back at GNS Science to see where these air samples are analysed, and also take a peek at ice cores that capture a snapshot of past climate in their frozen bubbles.

It was a big day, and there was a lot of new information to process.  What I hope she takes from the experience, however, is that all the great research that she’s about to see in Antarctica feeds into an enormous community of work happening across the country, all of which, ultimately, helps New Zealanders like Jamie to make more informed decisions about their future.

Follow Jamie’s Antarctica trip on Jamie’s World on YouTube – due for release in January 2017. Find out more about NIWA’s high performance computing facility, the Baring Head Atmospheric testing station, or the work at GNS Science

The Deep South Challenge is delighted to sponsor the adventure of a lifetime for YouTube sensation Jamie Curry to explore and highlight the impacts of climate change for a new generation of decision makers.

Jamie, now 20 and her natural comic style has been a hit with teenagers since she was 16 years old.  Many of her followers are now at university, in the workforce and voting. 

Rhian Salmon, from the Science Leadership Team for the Deep South Challenge says “It’s really exciting that Jamie is going to Antarctica. She’s going to meet some fantastic researchers who study processes happening in the air, ice, and ocean – all of which are critical for improving our understanding of the changing climate. Jamie’s followers will have to live with the reality of climate change in their lifetimes. Hopefully she’ll find new ways to communicate that climate change is real and happening now, and to stimulate a conversation about how we respond to that so that we all can create the best possible future for New Zealanders.”

Jamie and SciFilms journalist Damian Christie head to Antarctica in early November for ten days, including one night in a research container away from the cosy interior of Scott Base, to fully experience life on the ice.   The trip is sponsored by Antarctica New Zealand and the Deep South Challenge and will feature Jamie’s interaction with the environment and meeting NIWA scientists studying the ice, oceans and clouds in Antarctica.

For further information

Jamie’s trip announcement:

• NZ Herald article 

Follow Jamie’s trip:

• Jamie’s World on Youtube
• Jamie’s World on Twitter

Read the full newsletter here

• First Edition – September 2016

The Vision Mātauranga science programme, in partnership with Victoria University of Wellington, is offering two scholarships of up to $20,000 each to support Masters [by thesis] projects. The scholarships have been established to build cross-disciplinary research capability and capacity in global change studies.

In order to meet the emerging demands of increasingly complex social, economic, political and bio-physical system changes facing Māori and wider Aotearoa/New Zealand society, projects are sought that will contribute to the following four Vision Mātauranga programme research themes:

• Understanding climate change – linkages, pressure points and potential responses
• Exploring adaptation options for Māori communities
• Assistance to Māori businesses to aid decision-making and long-term sustainability
• Products, services and systems derived from mātauranga Māori

The closing date for applications is 27 October. 

For more information

For more details about the award including eligibility visit:

• Victoria University Vision Mātauranga – Deep South Challenge Masters Scholarship

For more information about this award and the Vision Mātauranga programme of science please contact:

• Darren-Ngaru KingEmail: [email protected]