Weather

It's heating up on land ... and sea

Thursday - Droughts affecting in the top of the South Island and top and west of the North Island are spreading, and sea temperatures are increasing, scientists say.

Storm left bill of $5b after tearing apart air force base

19 Dec 18 - Hurricane Michael smashed through Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, in October this year doing damage worth $5 billion.

Fiery February El Nino could mean summer could sizzle

29 Nov 18 - UN experts say there is a good chance of a climate-warming El Niño event by February - similar to the one that made 2016 the hottest year on record.

Stand by for multiple disasters, say experts

20 Nov 18 - Heatwaves, droughts, wildfire, storms, floods, sea-surges, food shortages and diseases – climate change could see communities hit by multiple disasters at once, scientists say.

It’s time to make polluters pay for damage

19 Sep 18 - In the last few days as hurricane Florence battered the east coast of the United States and typhoon Mangkhut hit the Philippines and China an important scientific breakthrough took place.

Our weather will get worse, warn scientists

3 Sep 18 - El Niño and La Niña – the weather patterns that bring New Zealand droughts on the one hand and storms on the other – will get worse as the climate warms, scientists say.

SHOCK WAVES: Should we be using tech to control weather?

28 Aug 18 - Farmers in Mexico have accused Volkswagen of ruining their crops by installing “hail cannons”, which fire shockwaves into the atmosphere in an effort to prevent hail storms from damaging cars rolling off the production line.

Why summer weather keeps on getting 'stuck'

22 Aug 18 - Summer weather patterns are increasingly likely to stall in Europe, North America and parts of Asia, according to a new climate study that explains why Arctic warming is making heatwaves elsewhere...

A city in Oman has just posted our hottest low temperature

2 Jul 18 - Over a period of 24 hours last week, the temperature in the Oman city of Quriyat never dropped below 42.6deg, most likely the highest minimum temperature observed on Earth.

Slower cyclones will mean more damage

18 Jun 18 - Tropical cyclones are slowing down. Hurricanes have lost their hurry. Paradoxically, this is bad news: they have more time to work their mischief.

Climate change dust storms can kill

14 Jun 18 - The US Dust Bowl in the 1930s was one of the worst environmental disasters of the 20th century.

STORM SEASON: Category 5 warning is no longer enough

7 Jun 18 - As the Atlantic hurricane season begins, scientists are worried that US coastal communities could face more storms so intense that current warning categories don't fully capture the threat.

US battens the hatches for season of storms

16 May 18 - The US is bracing for another harrowing spate of hurricanes this year, with forecasts of an active 2018 season coming amid new research that shows powerful Atlantic storms are intensifying.

Seeding clouds is common ... but does it work?

16 Mar 18 - Cloud seeding has been used to influence weather conditions in in more than 50 countries worldwide. But we still don’t know whether it works.

We might need a new storm scale of category six

23 Feb 18 - The increasing strength, intensity and duration of tropical cyclones has climate scientists asking whether a new classification needs to be created: a category six storm.

We've just had the hottest month on record

5 Feb 18 - New Zealand continues to tick off the climate records, with January the hottest month ever recorded.

2017 hottest year on record without help from El Niño

22 Jan 18 - Last year was the hottest since global records began that was not given an additional boost by the natural climate cycle El Niño, according to new data.

Spring is second-warmest on record

6 Dec 17 - This spring has set a mark as second-equal warmest on record.

November shapes up as record dry month

24 Nov 17 - Parts of New Zealand are on track for the driest November on record.