Facing the storm

Renowned climate scientist James Renwick's sobering new forecast for NZ and passionate plea for action

- GREG DIXON

First, the good news. You shouldn't need gumboots, a raincoat or even a canoe to F leave the house next summer.

Well, probably. For those fearing that climate change means this year's appalling weather is New Zealand's new normal, chances are it won't be.

With rising global average temperatures expected to breach the crucial 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels as early as 2027, the increasing warming of the planet because of man-made greenhouse gases means more extremes in climate and weather around the world. But the headline for New Zealand from one of our most prominent climate scientists is that this year's ruinous weather may just be down to rotten luck.

Well, probably.

"My hope," says James Renwick, doing his best to sound hopeful, "is this unfortunate sequence of events in the North Island so far this year is not going to be the norm in the future. I can't be sure it won't be, but there's no real reason to think it will be. My seat-of-the-pants feeling is it won't be." Seat-of-the-whatnots or not, Renwick has the expertise to make the call. He was a climate research scientist at Niwa, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, for 20 years. Now, he's a professor of physical geography at Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka and a member of New Zealand's Climate Change Commission. He's also been a key contributor to the global Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since the early 2000s.

So any prediction Renwick makes should be listened to by those who are worried about where our climate and weather are headed - and that's most of us. A poll of New Zealanders taken by insurer IAG last year found 75% of those surveyed said they were seeing, or were expecting to see, more frequent and extreme floods, while 72% thought they were seeing, or were expecting to see, more frequent and more severe storms.