2023 was New Zealand’s second hottest year on record and among the cloudiest, NIWA has announced today.
Globally, last year has been confirmed today as the warmest year on record but in New Zealand the record belongs to 2022.
Data just released by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research shows its seven weather stations recorded eight months last year when temperatures were above average or well above average.
May and September were the warmest on record, coming in 1.1C and 2C above the 1991-2020 monthly averages. NIWA says that result is “astounding”.
On the other hand August was relatively cool with temperatures below average. NIWA says it is the first month to have a temperature below average since May 2017.
And the place with the highest recorded sunshine hours last year was not Whakatāne or Nelson as is often the case. Instead it was in the Mackenzie Basin with 2658 hours recorded at Lake Tekapo.
NIWA’s annual report states: “Climate change continues to influence New Zealand’s long-term temperature trend, which has warmed at a rate of approximately 1.17 degrees Celsius (±0.2degC) per century according to NIWA’s seven-station series.”
The year was also the fourth cloudiest on record. To determine this it uses solar radiation data stretching back to 1972. It showed solar radiation anomaly was 97 precent of normal, meaning more clouds.
Meanwhile, it was not as wet as a year of floods from Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary weekend downpours might suggest.
NIWA says it was New Zealand’s 21st wettest year.
Unsurprisingly, Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, Gisborne and Hawkes Bay got rainfall dumps well above normal; Bay of Plenty and parts of Wairarapa got more rain than normal, but the rest of the country was at standard rainfall levels or below.
The West Coast experienced significantly less rain than normal.
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