New Zealand Reports Warmest And Wettest Winter On Record - Dataset Dates To 1909
New Zealand has had its warmest and wettest winter on record, with one meteorologist describing it as “mother nature’s way of expressing she has a fever”. For the three months to the end of August 2022, the average temperature was 9.8C, according to New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).
That figure was 1.4C above the 1981-2010 average from Niwa’s seven-station temperature series, which began in 1909, surpassing last year’s winter record of 1.3C. It is the third consecutive year the temperature record has been broken and climate change was having a significant impact, said Ben Noll, a Niwa meteorologist.
“The warmth is here to stay,” he said. “We are not seeing anything at least in the next couple of seasons that will suggest we’re going to be seeing cooler than average temperatures.” It was not just the winter season in which temperatures were consistently high, he said. “We feel like a broken record … but this is mother nature’s way of expressing she has a fever – she is running a higher temperature and it is pretty concerning to see that, successively, season after season.”
This year’s winter was also the first on record where the temperature rise exceeded 1.2C for all three months of the season, relative to the long-term average. Of the 10 warmest winters on record, six have occurred since 2013. This year, 50 locations experienced record temperatures and another 33 experienced near-record temperatures.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/02/new-zealand-weather-warmest-wettest-winter-on-record-aotearoa
