drought

Telling porkies to Parliament

by Gareth March 24, 2009

The Emissions Trading Scheme Review committee has released the first batch of submissions it has received — those made by organisations and individuals who have already made their presentations to the committee. There are some heavy hitters in there: from New Zealand’s science and policy community there’s the Climate Change Centre (a joint venture between [...]

29 comments Read the full article →

Fires (which burn brightly)

by Gareth February 10, 2009

The sheer scale of the Victorian bushfire tragedy (over 170 dead at the time of writing: BBC coverage here) is apparent in this false colour satellite image from NASA’s Earth Observatory, captured on Feb 9th. Melbourne is at the top of the bay bottom left, and two large brown areas are the extensive burnt areas [...]

36 comments Read the full article →

Fixing Climate

by Bryan Walker January 18, 2009

Wallace Broecker is a distinguished scientist in the field of climate history, and he’s been at it for over 50 years. He was one of the first scientists to warn of the dangers of global warming, as long ago as 1975. In a book published last year he teamed up with science journalist Robert Kunzig. [...]

6 comments Read the full article →

Look out, here comes tomorrow

by Gareth May 27, 2008

Hot off the presses: NIWA’s latest projections for the climate of New Zealand over the coming century were released this morning as part of a new MfE guidance manual (here, PDF) for local government. Based on IPCC modelling for AR3 and AR4 downscaled to local climate, plus early work with NIWA’s new regional climate model, [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Swell maps, and other stories

by Gareth May 20, 2008

Time for another round up of climate-related news. Hot on the web today (for cartophiles, at least) is that Google Earth has gained a swag of new climate change related information, the result of collaboration between Google, the UK Government, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey. The Climate Change in Our [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain

by Gareth February 12, 2008

I usually save my thoughts on weather for On The Farm (the other blog), but this summer in the Waipara Valley – especially the last 24 hours – has set me thinking. As the climate warms, Canterbury is projected to see an increased frequency of drought conditions. At the same time, the rain that does [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

Chris hates Greenpeace

by Gareth November 27, 2007

False balance time at the Herald. Last week they gave Greenpeace climate campaigner Susannah Bailey a chance to look at how certain sectors of the business community (Greenhouse Policy Coalition, Business Roundtable etc) are lobbying against current plans for an emissions trading scheme, this week they give NZ Climate “Science” Coalition science advisor Chris de [...]

19 comments Read the full article →

Revenge of the zombie facts

by Gareth November 5, 2007

Dr Vincent Gray is one of the most active of NZ’s little band of cranks. He’s been publishing his “envirotruth” newsletter since the ’90s, always brimful of climate scepticism, and has been a stalwart reviewer of IPCC reports. His most recent contribution to the IPCC process was to make 1,898 comments on the final draft [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Aussie forecast: drier and hotter

by Gareth October 2, 2007

Australians are going to have to come to terms with climate commitment. They face a rise in average temperature of 1ºC by 2030, and a significant increase in drought. The latest research on Australia’s future climate (Climate Change in Australia [PDFs here], by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology) was released yesterday at the Greenhouse [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

Wetter and drier: we did it

by Gareth July 24, 2007

The new Nature paper that prompted yesterday’s post on rainfall intensity is covered in detail by the BBC and New Scientist. Rainfall patterns around the globe are shown to be changing in response to increasing greenhouse gases, in line with model predictions. From New Scientist: Tropical regions north of the equator, including such areas as [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →