Climate represents the statistical properties of the weather. Climate
change is about how these distributions change over time. Understanding how
climate change signals emerge above natural variability in the future is the purpose of the Emergence/Whakahura programme. Among the aspects of shifting climate distributions
that matter most for social, economic and environmental systems are changes in
the extremes. Extreme weather, in the form of floods, droughts, and storms has
changed in recent decades, and will continue to have a disproportionately large
impact on our environment, society and the economy. We aim to improve
understanding of how and why extreme weather has affected New Zealand in the 20th
century, and to develop new tools to improve the forecasting of extreme weather
events.
The changing frequency and severity of extreme events will have significant impacts on New Zealand. Understanding extreme weather phenomena is consistently noted as
critical for effective and efficient adaptation decisions. Examples are found
in all sectors, including: drought for agriculture, urban pluvial flooding for
planning, fluvial flooding for farmland, storms for transport networks,
cyclones and storm surges for coastal communities, fire hazards for forestry,
rural, and semi-rural communities, and any sudden-onset weather event that can
affect economic activity.
These events have flow-on effects
for insurance and financial institutions, economic development, long term community
resilience, and spatial planning. Understanding the changing nature of extreme
events under climate change is the area in which we aim to make a global
contribution that is highly relevant to New Zealand. With our world-leading team
(including collaborators from the University of Oxford, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, UK MetOffice, Wharton Business School, and the London
School of Economics), we will be addressing this major gap in understanding extreme weather events.
Our team will be:
- identifying how extremes have previously damaged
New Zealand’s environmental, social and economic systems, and compiling a
comprehensive database of these losses,
- detecting how climate change signals have
emerged above natural variability in extreme events from the recent past (i.e.,
the problem of attribution),
- elaborating on how climate change signals will
emerge above variability in the future,
- estimating damages and losses, for New Zealand,
from future extreme events, and
- creating better tools for near real-time
modelling of extreme events, and incorporating these into national weather
forecasting
What results are expected and what will be their impacts?
The main benefit of our research
programme will be improved well-being through informed decision-making in the
face of fast-changing distributions of weather extremes. This will be delivered
through the knowledge, predictions, and tools we will design around the needs of
government, industry, iwi and individuals. In addition, the focus on the
aggregate and systemic impacts of extreme weather events under climate change
will be of interest to individual investors, financial institutions, and
regulators (the Treasury, the Reserve Bank, and major iwi asset holders).
Specific benefits include:
- Key decision-makers and investors becoming
better-informed regarding the most likely damaging weather events in the next 40 years, and the
likely systemic effects of these on the economy.
- Stakeholders and researchers having access to a
rich database of past losses (environmental, economic and cultural) from extreme weather
events in New Zealand.
- Individuals having access to improved forecasts
of near-term extreme events.
- Iwi/hapū improving protection
and management of their assets in the face of climate change induced extreme
weather.
- Cultivating and enhancing climate science
fluency among researchers, stakeholders and the general public.
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