B1.2.4 New Zealand: Climate
Description
This article is from the New Zealand FAQ, by Phil Stuart-Jones and Lin Nah with numerous contributions by others.
B1.2.4 New Zealand: Climate
The NZ climate is temperate with no real extremes; the north tends to be
warm temperate. Being an island nation, the yearly range of temperatures
is quite small, around 10 degrees Celsius variation between winter and
summer. NZ enjoys long hours of sunshine throughout the year making it an
ideal year round destination. In winter the South Island mountain and
central North Island do have heavy snowfalls providing great skiing.
Summer: December - February
Winter: June - August
sunshine Temperature (C) rainfall rain
hours mean max min daily av. (mm) days
sum win
Kaitaia 2113 15.6 29 0 1429 138
Auckland 1904 15.7 28 3 23 14 1289 140
Tauranga 2217 14.3 29 -2 1363 118
Hamilton 1981 13.5 29 -5 1236 131
Rotorua 1872 12.7 30 -4 23 12 1509 123
Gisborne 2173 14.1 33 -2 1079 113
New Plymouth 2157 13.4 26 -1 1514 142
Napier 2187 14.3 32 -2 830 92
Palmerston North 1764 13.2 28 -3 991 127
Wellington 2008 12.7 27 1 20 11 1305 124
Nelson 2372 12.2 28 -4 22 12 1005 96
Blenheim 2449 12.9 32 -4 671 84
Hokitika 1889 11.6 25 -2 2809 168
Christchurch 1992 11.9 34 -5 22 10 668 85
Timaru 1828 11.4 32 -4 586 81
Milford Sound 1828 10.5 25 -3 6213 183
Queenstown 1865 10.4 30 -5 21 8 832 93
Dunedin 1645 11.1 29 -2 19 10 802 119
Gore 1665 9.7 31 -5 894 137
Invercargill 1595 9.7 28 -5 1040 157
(some of the table above was pirated and I seriously doubt it's accuracy...
Anyone care to confirm it?)
From: blair@mullara.met.unimelb.EDU.AU (Blair Trewin)
Climate Group, Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre
Melbourne, Australia
Date: 12 Sep 1997 01:16:03 GMT
It looks OK although the info is open to misinterpretation.
From the numbers, I would expect that the 'maximum' and 'minimum'
temperatures quoted are the highest and lowest temperatures which
would be expected in a normal year. They aren't the record high and
low (Christchurch, for example, has had 42), nor are they the
mean daily maximum and minimum temps for any month.
The highest temperature on record in NZ is 42.4 C at Rangiora in
February 1973, and the lowest -21.6 C at Ophir in July 1995 (although
lower temperatures would have certainly occurred on the higher
summits of the Southern Alps where there are no instruments). I
could be a couple of tenths out on either of these (I'm going from
memory). The Rangiora mark, which broke the previous NZ record
by more than 4 degrees, is arguably one of the most exceptional
extreme temperature events ever recorded anywhere in the world.
Christchurch reached 41.8 on the same day, and there was also
a North Island record at Gisborne (38.3, IIRC). I don't expect
these records to be broken in a hurry.
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