NZ: Lifeboat country affected by the sea

New Zealand sits in the Southern Hemisphere, at latitude 35-46 south, compared to the UK at 50-60 north and Japan at 30-45 north, but the big difference in ocean terms is that we do not have a powerful current washing our shores. The UK has the Gulf Stream warming its shores and Japan has the warm Kuroshio Current, which keep the islands warmer than their latitude would dictate.

New Zealand sits in a quiet area of the Pacific, where the cold Antarctic Ocean, the Roaring Forties, just miss our southern shore, and we get a bit of the warm South Pacific gyre bounced off Australia, but it’s all pretty stable.

Nevertheless, the ocean has a big effect on our climate, as we are a long, thin country, and nowhere is more than 120km from the sea. The oceans have absorbed 90 per cent of all the extra heat that has reached the planet, but that has only warmed the sea by 0.1C, compared to the atmosphere’s 1.1C average. The advantage for us is that although the large continents have warmed by 2C, New Zealand has only warmed by 1C. In the end none of us will escape, but that is partly why New Zealand is known as a lifeboat country and millionaires are buying properties here, so that when their own countries are uninhabitable, they can move here.

There are 166 satellites monitoring changes in the climate, and they have observed patches of ocean that are considerably hotter than the rest of the ocean locally.

The question is, are they new or have events like that happened before?

They affect our weather locally for a month or two and then disappear, so we need to monitor them for 10 or 20 years to see if they are becoming more frequent.

Hot air from the equator rises, in what is known as the Hadley Cell, and this air drops back to the surface as sunny, dry air with clear skies and no rain at about 30 degrees of latitude, just north of Northland. The equivalent area in the Northern Hemisphere used to be known as the Horse Latitudes because that was where sailing ships were becalmed and horses died from lack of water, and were thrown over the side. As the temperature warms at the equator the dry air moves further south at the rate of one degree per decade.

As Kaitaia is at 35 degrees, it is not far from drought conditions.

At the bottom of the planet, east Antarctica is retaining its exceptionally cold climate, and the differential between there and the equator is encouraging westerly winds to dominate and change our climate.

I have written about this before, but drought is the biggest problem for farmers and our forests.

A future in New Zealand with fires of the type that are common in California and Australia would be terribly damaging and tragic for our countryside and wildlife.