Hilda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Winter has come to an end, and it's been a wet last few weeks. A burst of rain in August culminated in flooding in Wellington and saturated days for the rest of us. With us heading now into spring, the hope is that with longer days fast approaching, we might start to see some warmer weather again soon. For an outlook on weather in the months ahead today on the front Page, we're
joined by Enzett Herald's science writer Jamie Morton. Jamie, how typical was the weather this winter here in Auckland, for example? It didn't really feel like we had that many particularly cold days.
Yeah, it has been a bit of an odd season really actually to me, it feels like it's been a lot longer than usual because we had what was the
coldest May in fifteen years. That was partly due to a parting shop from our Nino really, But since then it's been a really mixed bag and we've had some torrential downpours around New Zealand, just mixed in with some unseasonably warm weather in parts of the country like it Hastings in June temperatures had like twenty five point seven degrees, which was like a June record, and July went down
is the eighth warmest for New Zealand. For Auckland though, yeah, it probably has been slightly warmer than usual, around half a de agree to a degree above average, but that's partly down to, you know, the nights having been a lot colder over winter with those big high pressure systems that have actually made for warmer days as well. And yeah, like this month, certainly, I think there's probably been a bit of a shift towards colder weather due to what's been happening down in Antarctica.
Now, you know, we love getting new weather terms when we get you on Jamie, And the last few weeks of winter were marred a bit by sudden stratospheric warming event. What was this and how did it play out?
Yeah, so a fear bit of a cold and unsettled weather it's been happening down south can actually be attributed to this thing. And in recent times there's only been sort of four observed times that this has actually happened in our half of the planet. So what is it. Well, it happens when the stratosphere high above Antarctica suddenly warms up and the winds slow down dramatically. And what that does,
that's what you can call a polar heat wave. But what it does is it disrupts the vortex over Antarctica. And for New Zealand we have the suspects because it misses with the polar jet stream that flows around the continent.
So when their jet stream gets more wavy and wobbly and disrupted, that means it pushes further out into the latitudes where New Zealand sometimes since and if you're in the South Islands below of South Islands, those people would have noticed it with a lot more of those sort of pollo glasses that have been coming and you know, bringing up that freezing with it. And for the rest of us, it's made for you know, somewhat cooler temperatures
over this last few weeks. In Taranaki where I am obvioertainly noticed it.
It is a windy, unsettled start to spring. Certainly we are feeling that at the tail end of winter that's going to continue into the early part of September, and that's going to come with rain importantly, so for some
of the hydro lake areas and temperature swings. Temperature swings, we've got air masses coming in from Australia that are going to bring some warm days but also be followed up by some cooler change through the first kind of two three weeks of September, and then for the mid to late stages of spring, we could see high pressure developing around New Zealand shores.
I've noticed there's been some unseasonably warm temperatures over in Australia for late winter. How does that tie into what we've been seeing over here.
Yeah, so right now the pressure set up around the entire Southern hemisphere is pretty interesting. So just to start, we were just talking the high pressure and the pole of the stratosphere, and then to the southwest of New Zealand we've been seeing this constant low pressure, these big masses that have been basically coming and off the Tasman Sea, grabbing onto you know, moisture from northerly flows and just sending all that in the form of rain into the
west coast. And that's what has led to a lot of those big deluges down in Wesley. But Australia is interesting because not only has it been sort of feeling the influence of this sudden stratispirit warning event as well, it's also a large part of the continent has been under what meteorologists call the heat dome of high pressure.
It's more or less over to this big, slow moving system that's coming from the east, and it's been sort of hovering over the most of the country and driving up some pretty crazy to and sending a lot of that warmth south. That's why, for instance, just the other day and one out backtown in South Australia, you know, a temperatures hit like forty degrees well, Western Australia and Kimberley I think it was had a new all time record for winter of forty one point six degrees on Tuesdays.
So yeah, a lot of that's to do with a big high pressure heat down over Australia, but obviously also climate changes in the mixto.
Looking ahead to spring, what's the outlook at this stage for the months ahead.
The general upshot is that it's going to be a bit of a rocky shift. I mean, I know we always associate spring with rocky, unsettled weather, but this year is going to be even more to that trend. So for the early part of spring, we can expect more of those sort of westerly flows that we've seen over the last few weeks, which have been coming in off the Tasman and bringing those rainy fronts into the West coast, and some of those winds have the potential to be
quite strong over the next few weeks. I mean, right now Met seven is watching for the possibility of some of those westle is heading gale streets in parts of New Zealand yea, And for the time being, we can keep expecting to see the influence of that event happening down in Antarctica, and also those lows to the southwest coming in bringing that drizzly weather sometimes on the cooler side, but on the east, places like Nature and Hastings can expect more of that sort of weather where things are
almost sort of pushing it into November temperatures. So yeah, it's a bit of a scrambled, messy picture, as it's always as we go into spring, but this year, I guess there's some interesting factors in the mix, some sort of wild card factors.
Given the weather of recent weeks, how wet is it predicted to be or we just don't know yet in terms.
Of how wet it's going to be. I think that is going to owe a lot to you know, some of those factors. We're just discussing what's going to happen with those low pressure systems, and you forecasters are telling me that, you know, the potential for variability is always there at the moment, So that can mean that rain is something that there's always a possibility of coming in.
And no doubt if those westerly flows constantly moving over New Zealand for places especially on the west coast, that always means the potential for lots of those rain makers coming in. I mean where I am in Tartanaki. You know, I got soaked dropping the kids off the sporting and over this month it's just felt like NonStop rain down to the South Island.
Though.
That's really good news because some of the southern hydro likes have been running pretty dire and they've been getting some good health and top ups of lots of this rain coming in. So yeah, to answer your question, yeah, a lot of it's going to come down to that classic spring fariability, but also as we move later into the season, I guess the big sort of question for rain making will be what this much anticipated l ninya clumate pattern means.
Well, last time we caught up on weather, La Ninia was the one everyone was looking out for. Hey, what's the latest thoughts on that. Does it seem like it will actually form?
Yeah, So we have talked about it a lot this year. Meteorologists have been expecting Lanina to return most of the year, and that is still widely expected to happen towards the back end of spring. What's changed is it doesn't look
like it's going to be a particularly strong system. So if we remember how crazy things got between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three, when we had three Larnin years in a row and you had like back to back record warm winters and you had all that extreme with the last summer, that's what we might think about when we think of Larnina weather, you know, like constant northeast of their flowers coming down from the tropics and just
spoiling the holidays of you know, people in Auckland and coramandor. The indications are for this system is it's not going to be quite as strong as was earlier anticipate, which might weaken its sort of usual signal. But I think nonetheless that could change if we see a couple of big bursts and trade winds in the Pacific. So yeah, it is a few bit of uncertainty of the but at this point probably not going to be as strong as previous ones.
On the other side of the world, it's obviously been summer, and once again record temperatures have been broken. July twenty second has set the record as the hottest day on record, breaking the previous record of July twenty first.
June marked thirteen consecutive months of record breaking heat across the globe. Worldwide, the Earth's aair temperature was hotter over the past year than ever before, and by over one point five degrees celsius.
I worry is that these records will just be reported like they are part of the Olympics, but not that they actually mean that the human rights of a vast majority of the people living on this planet are massively violated.
Are these soaring temperatures in the northern Hemisphere any signs of what things could be like for summer for us?
Yeah, it's always the old question, isn't it. I think calming our summer, we're going to have a different sort of range of factors on the board, but some of them are going to be the same. One is the fact that you know, we have that background climate change. So you know, for me, it was quite interesting looking at London, for instance, twenty five degrees in June, which was more what you'd see in the Barcelona at that time of the year, and thirty degrees again last month,
which isn't unusual. But with climate change, the number of days where it's happening is just increasing over time. So for us, I think this summer we're going to see some sort of similar effects in the fact that we have you know, that background warming. But also we're likely going to see marine heat waves kicking off again around the country, and that was a big driving factor behind, you know, some of those scorching temperatures we've seen in the North over their summer.
What this is science saying at the moment around rising temperatures. Have we made any progress or is it just getting worse?
Yeah? So, I mean, as you might recall, there's been lots of discussion over the last decade around that symbolock one point five degree threshold, you know, so that's basically an aspiration to halt global warming at one point five degrees but of the pre industrial average. Sadly, we just actually saw global temperatures exceed that for an entire year, and a major study just came out the other day suggesting that one point six degrees was actually the new
best case scenario that we might see. And right now, the current emissions pathway puts us on upwards of two and a half degrees warming by the end of the century. And even though there's been progress, nations including New Zealand, really need to do more here. And in terms of you know, the effects the impacts that climate change is happening, well,
I think for Kiwi's it's probably not less surprise. And given all the extreme weather we've seen over the last decade that seven of the eighth hottest years actually all happened here since twenty thirteen.
Any positive weather news we can wrap up on, Jamie, or are we set for a humored, muggy end of the year leading to summer and we're all just going to have to deal with being hot all the time? Yeah?
Well, I think the good news for me is that we now have less than a week of meteorological winter left. So a friend of mine who's unattached and living here in Santanaki tells me it's certainly the last New Zealand winter that he's going to do for a couple of years. But for everyone else, yeah, maybe the good news will
be some nice, warm temperatures. If you're on the East coast and further out, there is the chance that Learninia might actually bring us some favorable warm and nice weather between October and November, so that's something to potentially look forward to.
Thanks for joining us, Jamie. That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzet herold dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seles with sound engineer Paddy Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in to Morrow for another look behind the headlines.