Ex-Tropical Cyclone Dovi Crossed New Zealand - Impacts and Possible Future Cyclone-Related Risks
Posted: Tuesday, April 5, 2022
Cyclone Dovi weakened before landfall over the North Island of New Zealand but still caused damage with heavy rains and strong wind gusts of over 130 km/h. The disruptions included power outages, flooding, fallen trees, closed roads and resultant interruption to traffic flows. Some were also injured, including at least one clean-up related hospitalisation with both arms being broken and rib and spinal injuries incurred during clean-up from the storm. Tidy up work has taken weeks, and the financial cost to communities and individual households has been substantial.
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Observed and Modelled Marine Environmental Change
Posted: Thursday, April 27, 2017
The potentially deadly consequences of the ocean's declining oxygen levels on marine life (and impacts on human life), have been studied for many years. A new study published in the science journal Nature found that the ocean's worldwide oxygen content declined by more than 2% between 1960 and 2010. That number may seem small but its significance is not.
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When a 1 in 500 Year Event Is Not As It Appears: The Edgecumbe Flood of April 2017
Posted: Monday, April 10, 2017
New Zealand has recently experienced some seriously damaging rainfall events. In fact, New Zealand has been described as a ‘Pluvial Society’ (Daya-Winterbottom, 2011) and we seem to be living up to that billing.
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When Extreme Rainfall Disrupts a Water Supply – The Case of Auckland City, New Zealand - March 2017
Posted: Friday, March 24, 2017
The week of March 6th through the 11th 2017 is one that the residents of Auckland will not soon forget. For Watercare, who are responsible for treating and supplying the city’s reticulated water supply (and waste water treatment) the event is likely to stimulate some strategic thinking. With widespread rain and three ‘pulses’ of extreme but short duration rain in different parts of the city services were stress tested. One of the foci for extreme rainfall was in the Hunua-Wharekawa ranges located southeast of the city. This elevated area plays a critical role in the ever expanding footprint of water capture for the country’s primate city. Water has always been a challenge for Auckland City the development of the first piped supply from a small crater lake in the Auckland Domain in 1869. Now the water for this rapidly growing city are sourced from the Waitakere Ranges to the west of the city, the Hunua-Wharekawa Ranges to the Southeast and the Waikato River.
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Filling the Adaptation Gap: Representative Concentration Pathways for Application
Posted: Sunday, September 18, 2016
The adaptation gap defines the additional adaptation that will be required if the upper limit of anthropogenic global temperature change exceeds 1.5 C but is kept within the possible secondary target of 2.0 C (or higher). As a result of the COP21 in Paris a new initiative and focus on how this adaptation gap will be managed has emerged i.e. there is a global consensus that keeping global temperatures below 1.5 C is looking increasingly unlikely with each passing day and therefore action plans need to be made and implemented for adapting a wide range of sectors from food to water and health for a 2.0 C and possibly even warmer world by 2100 and beyond.
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Global Climate Change and Health: The Right to Health in a Climate Changed World
Posted: Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Human health can be affected by a wide range of ecological disruptions. Links with climate change, is a recent development and reflects the expanding breadth and sophistication of scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, the relationship of human health and disease with climate probably predates written history.
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Urban Flooding and Climate Resilient Infrastructure: New Data and Methods for Problem Solving
Posted: Friday, August 26, 2016
Wuhan, the most populous city in central China, was hard hit by extreme rains in July 2016. Wuhan’s excessive and under regulated urban development is partly to blame. Known as “the city of a hundred lakes,” Wuhan no longer lives up to its name. From 1949 to 2015, the number of lakes in Wuhan’s urban area dropped from 127 to 40 owing to infilling for various construction projects that effectively makes it harder for the city to absorb flood water.
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Climate Change Information Distillation for Decision Scale Applications
Posted: Friday, August 19, 2016
Over the last several years the international climate modelling community has put a great effort into the dynamic downscaling realm with now massive regional climate data sets available on the internet, for example, ESGF@LiU/CORDEX. The CORDEX vision is to advance and coordinate the science and application of regional climate downscaling through global partnerships.
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Hazards Without Disasters
Posted: Friday, August 12, 2016
Climate change is already impacting facilities, communities, and the environment throughout the world. In response, the people are clamouring for climate preparedness and resilience-related guidance and security planning considerations. Agencies have developed and continue to refine climate adaptation plans to identify their vulnerabilities and prioritize activities that reduce climate risks and impacts, in order to more effectively manage these risks to life, property, assets and overall national security.
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Extreme Precipitation and Climate Change – You Have Problems – We Have Solutions
Posted: Friday, January 29, 2016
Extreme rainfall analysis with consideration of climate change requires clear problem identification so that appropriate data and methods can be applied. The extensive experience of CLIMsystems in working with the latest CMIP5 daily and sub-daily data means that we know what data needs to be processed the right way to get the outcomes you need in your project. We have worked on critical infrastructure projects around the world. Experience is very important in the field of applied climate science. We have that experience.
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