Regional Reports.

Auckland : No activity to report.

Wellington   (Dr. Jim Renwick)

On 20 March a NIWA seminar was advertised to Wellington Members. Prof. David Karoly of Melbourne University spoke on "Attributing observed changes in physical and biological systems to anthropogenic climate influences"

The IPCC Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) found, with very high confidence, that observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases. Observed changes related to regional warming has been found primarily in terrestrial biological systems, the cryosphere, and hydrologic systems. The IPCC Working Group I AR4 concluded that most of the observed increase in global average surface temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. For the first time, the IPCC extended its attribution to the continental scale, stating that it is likely that there has been a substantial anthropogenic contribution to surface temperature increases in every continent except Antarctica since the middle of the 20th century.

Christchurch (Mikhail Titov)

Members of MetSoc were infomed about a free public

meeting and general forum "Changing Climates"

held on Wednesday 12 March  at the Town Hall

with participation of David Parker (minister

responsible for climate change issues), Peter

Townsend and Dr. David Wratt (NIWA)

Dunedin (Deborah Mills

We had one talk advertised to Met Soc

members since the last meeting. 

Dr. Trevor Chinn gave a talk on

"The Things that Glaciers Do"

at the University of Otago

on 1 April.

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WEATHER AND CLIMATE

No change from the last report. 

 No new papers have been submitted. 

We request YOUR weather paper, please.

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AMOS-Met Soc NZ conference 2008 report

By Richard Turner

Just a brief note about the conference in Geelong. NZ Met Soc was a co-sponsor. The conference was held at Deakin Univ waterfront campus. Quite a good venue, except for them being let down by the University IT dept with regards to internet access for attendees.

By my count there were 10 attendees from NZ. I - on behalf of the Society - said a few words of welcome and appreciation to the organisers, and introduced Xiogou Zheng as the Kidson medal winner when he gave his talk.

For whatever reason, there was a communication breakdown between the AMOS and MET Soc NZ societies over a few basic house keeping items regarding this conference, which was a shame.  Apart from this and a couple of other small items, the conference
was really interesting and very good value at $200 AUD.

AMOS has just got a new president: Dr. Richard Wardle from Monash University.  The Vice president is Prof. Neville Nicholls.

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Email to the newsletter editor, from Cliff Revell:

I have some comments on a few of the items in recent newsemails. 

Report on rainfall/flooding 7-8 January:

The flood in southern Manawatu slipped under the radar a bit, so to speak. It was much more severe there than in the other areas referred to in the item.  This was an extraordinary event caused by a warm, moist northwesterly airflow persisting for more than  48 hours which occurred in the overall setting of a La Nina regime. (Upper air temperatures and thicknesses above the 90 percentile, precipitable water 50mm and wet bulb potential temperature of 20 or 21deg C in the mixing layer.) It was an anomalous rainfall  pattern with high rainfall in western foothills and lowlands relative to mountain falls. Negligible falls in east. Three distinct pulses of rain over most of region. A farmer in the Otaki gorge said it was the heaviest fall over two days he knew of in 70 years on the farm.  He measured 340mm in 36 hours.  Apart from damage caused by flooding there were numerous earth slips on this and other properties due to the sheer intensity of the rain.

 Report on deluge in Wellington February 11th.

It could be inferred from this item that a power cut in Kapiti was caused directly by a local electrical storm.

Early morning commuters to Wellington reported seeing the lightning as they approached the city. They encountered the storm near Porirua.  The power failure occurred in the Haywards-Pauatahanui area. There was no electrical storm in the Kapiti district.  4.5mm of rain was recorded at Paraparaumu Beach.

Report on waterspout off Kapiti coast Feb 15th.

This phenomenon was seen and photographed by many people (not me unfortunately).

During the day the weather was quite bright with variable skies and sunny periods. I noted a couple of  light showers  Any significant convective activity appeared to be very isolated. This is confirmed by the photographs  Witnesses reported hearing "one or two cracks of thunder" at the time the waterspout was

observed.  A photograph taken as it moved ashore showed it was associated with a line of TCu lying about NW/SE which were deepest over land but the tops were much lower in the part extending seaward.

There was a shower falling inland (rainbow).  I was surprised to read in the report that a severe thunderstorm watch had been in effect and that there were many thunderstorms around with high intensity falls expected.  Late that night and early Saturday morning distant lightning was seen but no thunder was

heard. 1.3mm of rain in 24 hours at Paraparaumu Beach.

Cliff Revell