Sunshine hours going into the final month

Archive of NZ Weather & Climate
Forum rules
These topics are a read-only archive and may be subject to out-of-date information.

For today's weather discussion head to: New Zealand Weather & Climate
Locked
Myself
Posts: 396
Joined: Wed 20/02/2008 21:55
Location: Welly
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 0

Sunshine hours going into the final month

Unread post by Myself »

It looks like Wellington's November total just scraped over 200 hours, so within 5% of normal.

Even though we are a touch ahead of average for the year to date, it looks impossible for us to get another 2200 hours year (like 2007 and 2008). 2100 may be possible, but with a very cloudy week on the way I think it may turn into a battle just to reach average for 2009. We might not even get 200 hours this month, which would be poor for December.

Where does the rest of the country stand?

Of particular interest would be Whakatane this year! And also the famous Nelson/Blenheim competition, where do they stand and how close are they to each other?
RWood
Posts: 3745
Joined: Sat 24/01/2004 16:56
Location: Wellington
Has thanked: 188 times
Been thanked: 123 times

Re: Sunshine hours going into the final month

Unread post by RWood »

Re Wellington, can't win them all - anyway, the average hours have risen considerably from about the mid-1980s, viz:

1951-1980 mean 2007
1961-1990 mean 2049
1971-2000 mean 2066
1979-2008 mean 2098

For YTD 2009 to October: Mangere total 1794, Kelburn 1668, Christchurch Aero 1741, so both those cities well ahead of Wellington, though Auckland's poor total for November should be 50-60 behind Wellington, so some catch-up there. Wellington was well ahead of Auckland in 2008 but that clearly won't be the case this time.

To end-October Nelson had 2065 hours to Blenheim's 1992, so clearly it will win that race (the comparison for complete years between the two, ignoring site changes, and going back to the first common records in 1930, gives them virtually identical averages).

There is still a problem with the Whakatane records - up to about 9 April they are flagged as unreliable after testing and replacement of equipment. Don't know what NIWA will do with the data, probably get pressured into using the dodgy records so as to give Whakatane a total for 2009. For Jan-April Whakatane was 96 (!!) hours ahead of Nelson; for April to October it was 66 hours lower than Nelson, but that's still a (misleading) advantage of 30 hours YTD. Whakatane isn't the only place that has had suspect-looking numbers since the introduction of EWS equipment, but the others aren't in a race, and the records are too short for definitive conclusions (locations like Greymouth, Balclutha and Ashburton are getting far higher totals than they did with the manual equipment).
Locked