Kiwis enjoy tropical summer by staying at home

Not only was the 2017/18 summer New Zealand’s hottest on record, a meteorologist says a particularly tropical week in Auckland was comparable to living in Fiji.

Ben Noll, from climate agency National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), said Auckland endured climate conditions similar to Fiji or New Caledonia for a near five-day period from February 5.

That was when the dew point, a measure of both humidity and temperature, for Auckland failed to drop below 19 degrees Celsius for 115 hours.

‘‘It was as if you were transported 5 degrees or 10 degrees north in latitude for a period of time.’’

Overall, it’s been the country’s hottest summer on record. And there are still five days to go.

Data released yesterday from Niwa shows temperatures are running 2.3C above average.

You have to go back more than 80 years to 1934/35 to find our next hottest summer – which was still half a degree colder than what Kiwis are experiencing now.

And there’s still five days left in summer for this year’s recordbreaking average temperature to push higher.

Well-above average sea temperatures around New Zealand have been credited – or blamed – for boosting summer highs.

Noll said that since November last year there have been ‘‘three distinct peaks when sea surface temperatures were between 2C to 4C above average’’.

‘‘Mid-December, late January and mid-late February.’’

In some areas sea temperatures spiked at 6C to 7C above average.

‘‘This represented some of the largest ocean temperature anomalies anywhere in the world over the last several months.’’

With this season’s balmy to uncomfortably hot temperatures have come extreme weather events.

Warmer seas have allowed marauding subtropical cyclones like Gita to barrel south onto New Zealand, endangering lives and damaging land and property.