Will GW increase NZ's sunshine hours?
Posted: Fri 05/12/2014 08:52
I put it out there that Global warming is going to increase sun shine hours here
Under the climate change scenario the subtropical subsidence ridge will strengthen over the north of the country during the summer months leading to less rainfall and higher sunshine hours. So the Bay of Plenty arguably could become the sunniest part of NZ. And Auckland becomes sunnier as well.Manukau heads obs wrote:I put it out there that Global warming is going to increase sun shine hours here
Umm, isn't Whakatane claiming the title these days (or trying to), so one might argue it's already happening?NZstorm wrote:So the Bay of Plenty arguably could become the sunniest part of NZ. And Auckland becomes sunnier as well.
Whakatane is merely one of many cases where the electronic readings are giving much higher values - by 150 to 400 hrs per annum - than manual equipment in the same locations did. When apples were compared with apples (manual era) Whakatane was clearly lower than Nelson and Blenheim - in 45 years or so of records it won just twice, with Blenheim, Nelson or Motueka taking the rest - apart from a single year for Mt John.tgsnoopy wrote:Umm, isn't Whakatane claiming the title these days (or trying to), so one might argue it's already happening?NZstorm wrote:So the Bay of Plenty arguably could become the sunniest part of NZ. And Auckland becomes sunnier as well.
That's a good question. There have been plenty of issues. I pointed out to Niwa when Queenstown Aero values suddenly dropped dramatically - the instrument had to be replaced. Franz Josef (not renowned for sunshine) has had more than one run of absurdly high values, and currently this has been happening for over a year. A comment from the UK from someone comparing equipment types was that the type used here (Kipp-Zonen is the name I think) could "drift in calibration" readily. Re Whakatane, see my other post.jamie wrote:But are the automatic ones consistent between them? If yes then once we have auto across all key sites it shouldn't matter about old method results.
That was over 5 years ago, and Whakatane "anomalies" have increased since. Last year's tally of more than 300 hours ahead of Nelson and Blenheim is just plain ridiculous. Note also the caveat at the end of NIWA's 2009 report.spwill wrote:From Niwa website regarding Whakatane sunshine hrs,
https://www.niwa.co.nz/news/whakatane-s ... s-released