{"id":506307,"date":"2026-07-02T14:14:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/506307\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T14:14:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:14:16","slug":"drought-unpicked-apples-and-freezing-winters-el-ninos-greatest-hits-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/506307\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought, unpicked apples, and freezing winters: El Ni\u00f1o’s greatest hits"},"content":{"rendered":"

El Ni\u00f1o has been observed for centuries<\/a> – starting with Peruvian fishermen who noticed that in certain years the ocean was warmer, and brought more tropical fish to their nets.<\/p>\n

But it’s only been in recent decades that live monitoring of ocean and atmosphere conditions has allowed forecasters to observe the climate phenomenon develop in real time.<\/p>\n

Climate Prescience director and scientist Nathaneal Melia says the El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation is the largest form of natural climate variability in the globe.<\/p>\n

“It’s absolutely huge for the Pacific region.”<\/p>\n

But New Zealand sits thousands of kilometres away from the high-impact zone in the tropical Pacific, and so El Ni\u00f1o’s effects are weaker and less predictable here than somewhere like Indonesia, which almost always suffers through wildfire and drought.<\/p>\n

Melia likens El Ni\u00f1o to Zeus, with other climate drivers acting as minor and demi-gods in a “pantheon” of influences on New Zealand’s weather.<\/p>\n

“We rely on El Ni\u00f1o’s effects being translated down through these other sorts of atmospheric phenomena and oscillations… and even those can sit a bit away from us. They send these messages to us through these whispers.”<\/p>\n

University of Waikato climate scientist Luke Harrington says New Zealanders “like to get pretty excited any time an El Ni\u00f1o event is declared”.<\/p>\n

That’s often misplaced, he says. “We’ve actually got a quite weak relationship [with it].”<\/p>\n

\"University<\/p>\n

University of Waikato climate scientist Luke Harrington<\/p>\n

SUPPLIED<\/p>\n

Modern observations show there are certain trends that are more likely, though, when a strong El Ni\u00f1o is in force.<\/p>\n

The coming El Ni\u00f1o is likely to rival or exceed previous strong El Ni\u00f1o events – here’s how the big ones have played out here.<\/p>\n

1982-83<\/p>\n

Back in 1982, James Renwick was a young MetService researcher when the agency issued its first-ever press release about a coming El Ni\u00f1o that spring and summer.<\/p>\n

Now a professor of physical geography at Victoria University and former climate commissioner, Renwick was part of the group who produced the climate outlook, based on new research.<\/p>\n

“It turned out to be almost exactly right, which was pleasing – I can’t say that’s worked every time since, but it did then.”<\/p>\n

What New Zealand experienced over the summer of 1982 and 1983 were “textbook” El Ni\u00f1o conditions, he said: drier than normal conditions in the east, wetter than normal conditions in the west, and a westerly flow that generally kept temperatures cool.<\/p>\n

“It was a big deal,” Renwick says.<\/p>\n

“I remember the farming community were struggling – it even featured in Footrot Flats.”<\/p>\n

Droughts were declared in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, and El Ni\u00f1o loomed large in the media and public mind for months.<\/p>\n

1991-1994<\/p>\n

Contrary to popular belief that El Ni\u00f1o means a hot summer, it actually often brings cooler temperatures with it thanks to prevailing sou’westers, Renwick says.<\/p>\n

The El Ni\u00f1o events of the early 1990s weren’t especially strong, but they came back-to-back and also coincided with the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, creating a “canopy” of volcanic debris in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\"Summer<\/p>\n

Summer rainfall patterns in New Zealand during five modern El Ni\u00f1o events.<\/p>\n

Supplied \/ ESNZ<\/p>\n

“That cooled the whole planet for a couple of years – 1992, 93,” Renwisk says.<\/p>\n

“That added up to 1992 having the coldest winter for 40-odd years or so.”<\/p>\n

When temperatures are lower, there’s less moisture in the air, so less rain falls – putting pressure on farming, water supplies, and the hydro lakes. As well as being freezing, the winter of 1992 therefore also coincided with a power crisis in New Zealand, as El Ni\u00f1o exacerbated the prolonged drought.<\/p>\n

Two years later, in winter 1994, a third El Ni\u00f1o event in a row was blamed for the Auckland water crisis.<\/p>\n

Earth Sciences New Zealand principal scientist Chris Brandolino says El Ni\u00f1o can still bring “spiky” temperatures with it.<\/p>\n

The hottest temperature ever recorded in New Zealand was 42.4\u00b0C at Rangiora on 7 February, 1973 – in the middle of another major El Ni\u00f1o event.<\/p>\n

It’s a record that’s stood for more than 50 years – with the twin influences of climate change and El Ni\u00f1o, could it fall this summer?<\/p>\n

1997-1998<\/p>\n

Likie 1982-83, the way El Ni\u00f1o played out over the summer of 1997-98 was “textbook” for New Zealand, Renwick says.<\/p>\n

A government report published in mid-1998<\/a> noted that eastern regions were “badly affected” by drought.<\/p>\n

“The most extreme conditions [were] evident in Marlborough, North Canterbury and parts of the Wairarapa and Hawke’s Bay.”<\/p>\n

Apple-growers found their burgeoning crops got sunburnt and overheated, leading some orchardists to leave nearly half the fruit unpicked.<\/p>\n

The report estimated the costs to agriculture alone were $425 million (about double that in today’s money).<\/p>\n

Atypical hot temperatures towards the end of the summer put pressure on city populations, too.<\/p>\n

“Higher air temperatures, by as much as 3\u00b0C above average, have led to a heavier demand for urban air-conditioning and hence for electricity,” the report noted.<\/p>\n

However, there was no repetition of the 1992 electricity crisis that occurred during the 1991-94 El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

Globally, the 1997-98 El Ni\u00f1o hit hard, it said.<\/p>\n

“Reported impacts include drought-induced food shortages, massive forest fires, thousands of deaths from starvation, flooding and diseases, and reductions in economic growth forecasts.”<\/p>\n

2015-2016<\/p>\n

The most recent strong El Ni\u00f1o was forecast to be much more severe than what eventually transpired, Luke Harrington says.<\/p>\n

“That was also supposed to be a super El Ni\u00f1o. It was pretty warm, and there probably were some regional impacts in some places, but it wasn’t very widespread or significant.”<\/p>\n

Earth Sciences New Zealand says typical south-westerly patterns developed at first, in December 2015.<\/p>\n

“[But] a change to more northerly-quarter winds than usual for January and February brought more rain and alleviated fears of El Ni\u00f1o-associated drought in many parts of the country.”<\/p>\n

University of Waikato climate scientist Luke Harrington says the worst drought that New Zealand has reliable observations for occurred during 1914-15, which also coincided with an El Ni\u00f1o,<\/p>\n

However, he says it’s important to note that not every El Ni\u00f1o brings drought to New Zealand – and not every drought happens in an El Ni\u00f1o year.<\/p>\n

“Some of our largest [drought] events of the recent past haven’t occurred during El Ni\u00f1o events – I’m thinking particularly 2012-2013, the 2007-08 Waikato droughts, the same with 1988-89 as well.”<\/p>\n

Earth Sciences, in its summary of the 2015-16 El Ni\u00f1o, noted that drought on the east coast “is not a certainty during every El Ni\u00f1o”.<\/p>\n

‘[However], the risk of El Ni\u00f1o-driven drought during a strong event is enough to warrant risk-management actions by farmers and others whose livelihoods are likely to be adversely affected by prolonged dry conditions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"El Ni\u00f1o has been observed for centuries – starting with Peruvian fishermen who noticed that in certain years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-506307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}