New Zealand\u2019s climate was changing at the same time<\/a>, Stats NZ said.<\/p>\nAnnual average temperatures had increased by 1.36C since 1908, when reliable records began, with winter averages rising particularly quickly.<\/p>\n
Rainfall patterns painted a more complex picture.<\/p>\n
Some places in the North Island now received more annual rainfall, while other locations \u2013 such as Tauranga and Whang\u0101rei \u2013 were significantly drier.<\/p>\n
The South Island was generally getting wetter, Stats NZ said.<\/p>\n
What was also clear was that more of the country\u2019s rain was arriving all at once, during storms and other severe weather events.<\/p>\n
At 11 of the 30 weather stations included in the analysis, the proportion of annual rain falling on \u201cvery wet days\u201d had slowly increased between 1960 and 2025, at a rate of 0.6% to 1.8% a decade.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of New Zealand\u2019s extreme rainfall is driven by \u201catmospheric rivers\u201d arriving from the tropics.<\/p>\n
As the global atmosphere warms, it can hold more water vapour \u2013 meaning more rain when those atmospheric rivers do arrive.<\/p>\n
Extreme rainfall can overwhelm stormwater and river management systems, causing flooding and destabilising land \u2013 leading to landslips.<\/p>\n
Levels of methane also rise<\/p>\n
Levels of methane in New Zealand\u2019s atmosphere also slightly increased in 2025, from 1880ppm in December 2024 to 1890ppm in December 2025.<\/p>\n
Overall, methane concentrations have increased 13.6% since December 1989, the first year the Baring Head station began monitoring the gas.<\/p>\n
Methane is much shorter-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide \u2013 which makes its inclusion in emissions targets controversial \u2013 but has a greater immediate warming effect.<\/p>\n
New Zealand has pledged to reduce its emissions of both gases, although the Government weakened the methane target last year.<\/p>\n
The 2016 Paris Agreement \u2013 to which New Zealand is a signatory, with almost every other country \u2013 pledges to keep global warming to well below 2C and pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5C.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the annual global temperature increase surpassed 1.5C for the first time.<\/p>\n
Researchers have said there is a strong likelihood that this year and next could break that record again, following northern hemisphere heatwaves and a burgeoning \u201csuper El Ni\u00f1o\u201d that has caused ocean temperatures to spike dramatically.<\/p>\n
This year a United Nations report found long-term warming beyond 1.5C was now inevitable, even if countries honoured their current emissions pledges.<\/p>\n
Best-case scenarios now put the peak at 1.8C \u2013 beyond irreversible \u201ctipping points\u201d for some ecosystems, such as coral reefs.<\/p>\n
The report said the world needed to do all it could to limit the \u201covershoot\u201d, and then bend the temperature curve back down.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is by no means an acceptable or preferred pathway,\u201d it concluded. \u201cIt is simply the best remaining option.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, the world now faced inevitable adaptation to the effects of climate change, it said.<\/p>\n
New Zealand\u2019s overall emissions are gradually decreasing, largely due to forestry offsets, rather than cutting emissions at their source.<\/p>\n
The most recent Greenhouse Gas Inventory data, for 2024, showed total annual gross emissions (emissions at source) fell 0.1%, while net emissions (which include forestry offsets) fell 2%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The greenhouse gas data, collected at Earth Sciences New Zealand\u2019s monitoring station at Baring Head in Wellington, contributes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[28195,3105,273,181196,96242,3594,78,2517,5983,117,111,78751,139,69,1974,147,418,2963],"class_list":["post-619886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-atmosphere","tag-data","tag-environment","tag-gases","tag-greenhouse","tag-hit","tag-in","tag-kate","tag-levels","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newton","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-record","tag-science","tag-shows","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619886","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=619886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}