NZ's Warmest And Wettest Winter On Record

NIWA’s climate scientists can now confirm what you may have suspected. After carefully poring through more than a century’s worth of data, it has been officially determined that winter 2022 was Aotearoa New Zealand’s warmest and wettest on record.

The 2022 winter climate summary is attached.

Highlights:

- Three-peat: NZ just had its warmest winter on record, yet again - the country now has had 3 consecutive record warm winters

- The nationwide average temperature was 9.8°C (1.4°C above the 1981-2010 average)

- Of the 10 warmest winters on record, 6 have occurred since 2013

- Winter 2022 was the first on winter record where the temperature anomaly exceeded +1.2C for all three months of the season

- 84 locations experienced a record or near-record warm winter

- Our coastal seas also had their warmest winter on record with persistent marine heatwave conditions

- It has been our wettest winter on record due to numerous extreme rainfall events that resulted in severe flooding and slips across the country

- 42 locations experienced a record or near-record wet winter

- It snowed heavily in the South Island initially but this last everywhere; Aoraki/Mt Cook Village had its deepest snowpack on record (since 2010) in mid-July

- Ending on a brighter note, the sunniest four regions in 2022 (so far) are Taranaki (1701 hours), Bay of Plenty (1675 hours), Greater Nelson (1621 hours), Auckland (1564 hours)

A livestream is taking place at 4:00pm today (half an hour later than stated in this morning's email): https://www.facebook.com/NIWAWeather/live

https://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/2209/Climate_Summary_Winter_2021_Final_compressed.pdf

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