Draft Climate Change Strategy

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Thanks for your interest in our Climate Change Strategy. This consultation closed April 2015. 



The consultation period for providing feedback has now closed

Tell us what you think about the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s draft Climate Change Strategy for the Wellington region.

Climate change is something that will affect everyone in the region. It is often described as the biggest environmental challenge we face.


As a coastal region, hemmed in to the east, south, and west by the sea, we are particularly vulnerable to even a small rise in sea level, and coastal hazards such as erosion and storm surge.


This will be significant and expensive for some landowners across the region. Storms occurring on top of a higher sea level will affect public infrastructure such as transport network and stormwater systems, as well as people’s homes and other buildings.

With help from the community, the Greater Wellington Regional Council has developed a draft Climate Change Strategy for the Wellington region to increase awareness of the risks and to outline the actions it plans to take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help the region to adapt to the effects of climate change.

What do people in the Wellington region think about climate change? What actions are needed? Get involved, share your views, let us know what’s important to you.

Download the draft Climate Change Strategy and tell us what you think by providing your comments below!








The consultation period for providing feedback has now closed

Tell us what you think about the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s draft Climate Change Strategy for the Wellington region.

Climate change is something that will affect everyone in the region. It is often described as the biggest environmental challenge we face.


As a coastal region, hemmed in to the east, south, and west by the sea, we are particularly vulnerable to even a small rise in sea level, and coastal hazards such as erosion and storm surge.


This will be significant and expensive for some landowners across the region. Storms occurring on top of a higher sea level will affect public infrastructure such as transport network and stormwater systems, as well as people’s homes and other buildings.

With help from the community, the Greater Wellington Regional Council has developed a draft Climate Change Strategy for the Wellington region to increase awareness of the risks and to outline the actions it plans to take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help the region to adapt to the effects of climate change.

What do people in the Wellington region think about climate change? What actions are needed? Get involved, share your views, let us know what’s important to you.

Download the draft Climate Change Strategy and tell us what you think by providing your comments below!






CLOSED: This discussion has concluded.

Ask your question about climate and our climatologist Dr. Alex Pezza will endeavour to have it answered as soon as possible. Policy Advisor, Laura McKim, from GWRC's Strategic Planning department, will also provide input.

Alex has just started as the new GWRC Climatologist. He has a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil (the city where he was born), and 10 years of teaching and research experience at Melbourne University in Australia. Alex is passionate about climate and environment, and is learning about what climate information we need to best fulfil our obligations, leading us into a safer and more sustainable future. Most of his previous research is about extreme weather events such as heat and cold waves, floods and droughts, and their association with climate variability and change on a global scale. As Alex says, "It is important to remind people that the role of a climate scientist is not restricted to climate change - understanding natural climate variability is also fundamental to make sure that we know how to identify where we are vulnerable, and increase our quality of life."


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    Have short term weather conditions become harder to forecast with increasing temperatures? I imagine they would be less accurate as there is more energy being trapped in the 'system'. I've been in nz twenty years (in Wellington) and it 'feels' like even two or three day forecasts are less accurate than they used to be. PS. I realise climate is different from local weather conditions but just as climate change will affect the number of extreme weather events, I assume it is also making even regular weather patterns harder to predict too. If this is the case I think the public should be educated on this too...

    dwscott asked almost 6 years ago

    Many thanks for this very interesting question.

    While you could say that weather forecasting has become more challenging because of the increased energy available for severe weather events due to greater concentrations of greenhouse gases in the oceans and atmosphere, we have to take into account that the models have also improved a great deal in terms of their representation of the complexity of the atmosphere. The physical representations in the models are now much more complete because they include a broader range of physical processes than in the past, such as air-sea interactions, sea ice, and soil moisture. The models have also improved in their representation of the initial (observed) conditions due to increased satellite coverage. The current models require a lot of computer power to run, which has become possible only recently.

    As a result of all this, we can say with confidence that in general the weather forecasts today are actually much better than they used to be a few decades ago, even though predicting very anomalous events- things like extremes of wind/rainfall and/or heat and cold- continues to be quite challenging.


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    Wellington seems to be dealing with Climate Change, therefore climate change must exist in New Zealand. There appears to be no Climate Change in Australia, so why does New Zealand have it? Or is Australia ignoring it?

    airstreamarchitects asked almost 6 years ago

    It's good that there's recognition that the Wellington region is working to address climate change- successfully dealing with climate change is something that Greater Wellington Regional Council is serious about and sees as a priority.

    Many other councils, non-government organisations, businesses and members of the community are working towards this goal too, both here and across the Tasman.

    Climate change is occurring everywhere; it is a global scale phenomenon. Some geographical areas can be more affected than others, due to the way in which the atmosphere re-adjusts to an increase of greenhouse gases concentration, moisture content, and other factors.

    Australia has a very dry landmass, which has been and will continue to be affected by climate change, probably even more so than New Zealand (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/)

    A lot of changes to the climate have been observed in Australia to date, and many more are expected to occur with further warming of the climate system. This short briefing document identifies the key climate risks and impacts for Australia: http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/verve/_resources/TCI_MediaBrief_IPCC_March2014.pdf