New Zealand Climate Committee

Royal Society Committee on New Zealand Climate

Chair: Dr David Wratt, NIWA, Wellington

The Climate Committee held one formal face-to-face meeting in Wellington in May 2005 to discuss the 2005/6 workplan and budget, and a teleconference in November 2005 to further plan upcoming activities. Committee membership continued unchanged from 2004.

The Committee undertook the following activities:

Australia–New Zealand Climate Impacts Workshop, Christchurch, 1 February: This workshop was organised by Climate Committee members, with cosponsorship from the NZ IGBP Committee, and some financial assistance from the Ministry for the Environment. It brought New Zealand scientists together with the Lead Authors of the Australia-New Zealand chapter of the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Recent research findings and literature relevant to the AR4 were identified and discussed.
 
Public Discussion Paper on the Management of New Zealand’s Freshwater Resources: The committee made a submission to the Ministry for the Environment on this paper, stressing the need to consider variability of water supply resulting from both natural variations and human-induced trends in climate in managing water resources. The committee also identified the need to research and monitor effects of climate change and natural climate variability on freshwater supply and demand.

Signals for the Global Environmental Change Research Investment Process: The committee made a submission to the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology regarding their draft investment signals. The submission emphasised the interactive cross-disciplinary and collaborative approach required to address climate issues (and other environmental change issues), the importance of researching natural climate variability and extremes (and not just human-induced changes), the need to identify key sensitivities and vulnerabilities of New Zealand’s natural and managed systems, and the importance of international collaboration.

Educational Activities: The Committee supported work by an RSNZ Teacher Fellow involving New Zealand schools in the international climateprediction.net project to run climate change predictions in spare time on personal computers. Committee members also provided assistance, including review comments, to a writer preparing an RSNZ Gamma on “The Science of Climate Change”.

International Collaboration: The committee maintained an overview of World Climate Research Programme (including CLIVAR) activities of relevance to New Zealand. Dr Wratt represented New Zealand at business meetings of several commissions during the August 2005 International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) scientific symposium in Beijing. He also hosted a dinner in December for the Director of the Chinese Meteorological Agency with some senior New Zealand researchers and science managers, to facilitate collaboration with China on climate and Antarctic research.