Heavy rainfall is one of the most frequent and widespread severe weather hazards to tướng affect New Zealand. It is defined as rainfall greater than vãn 100 milimet in 24 hours.
In New Zealand, heavy rainfall is relatively common. Often, a significant amount of precipitation occurs in only a few hours, leading to tướng severe flooding and landslide risk.
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Causes of heavy rainfall
Heavy rainfall occurs over New Zealand mainly because of the following common weather systems:
- ex-tropical cyclones
- North Tasman Sea lows moving to tướng NZ region
- depression/lows from the south
- cold fronts.
New Zealand's mountains tend to tướng modify and amplify precipitation, and this often causes the frequent heavy rainfall we experience. Heavy rainfall tends be most common over the western coastal region of the South Island and the middle and upper North Island, and least common on the east side of the South Island (due to tướng the prevailing westerlies).
Potential consequences of heavy rainfall
Heavy rainfall can lead to tướng numerous hazards, for example:
- flooding, including risk to tướng human life, damage to tướng buildings and infrastructure, and loss of crops and livestock
- landslides, which can threaten human life, disrupt transport and communications, and cause damage to tướng buildings and infrastructure.
Where heavy rainfall occurs with high winds, risk to tướng forestry crops is high.
Heavy rainfall research at NIWA
NIWA scientists are currently working within the Reducing the Impact of Weather-Related Hazards Programme to tướng improve hazard mitigation and increase society's resilience to tướng hazards such as heavy rainfall.
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To achieve this, we are developing and applying improved weather prediction models capable of accurately forecasting severe events in New Zealand.
Current NIWA research projects
For heavy rainfall specifically, we are:
- Developing very high resolution numeric weather prediction (NWP) forecast models and investigating the effects of model resolution on heavy rainfall simulation. Models are run rẩy with a resolution of 12km and 1.5km on NIWA's supercomputer.
More information on our supercomputing facility
- Improving the model performance by incorporating all available meteorological observationsto generate the initial atmospheric conditions as accurately as possible.
- Improving the processes that control the dynamic characteristics and predictability of heavy rainfall in the New Zealand region into the NWP model formulations, including the land surface processes needed.
- Developing ensemble methods/forecasts by running the model several times with slightly different initial conditions to tướng increase our confidence in forecasting heavy rainfall.
The output of this research is being incorporated into our environmental forecasting product, EcoConnect.
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Visit the EcoConnect website
Additionally, NIWA has analysed measurements of extreme rainfall throughout New Zealand, and developed the miễn phí HIRDS software tool to tướng provide public information on the risk of extreme rainfall. HIRDS is regularly used by engineers throughout New Zealand, to tướng assist in designing bridges, culverts and waterways. HIRDS includes an option to tướng make an assessment of the impact of climate change on extreme rainfall.
Visit the HIRDS website
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