…is full of drama, mystery, and intrigue. It begins billions of years ago, involves massive impacts from comets, continents smashing into one another, Earth’s wobbly orbit around the sun, and of course, people—heroes and villains and everyday people of all ages. Who knew what, when? What’s causing it today? Where’s the evidence? How will it affect us here in Aotearoa? And how is the world and New Zealand responding?

People have been trying to unravel these mysteries for over 150 years. Their journeys from Antarctica to Siberia, the deepest oceans to the upper atmosphere, and the far more treacherous realms of power, corruption and greed, are yours to discover in this climate wiki section of the website, in four parts set out in the menus below.

Because Earth systems are complex and interlinked, and because our responses are equally complex, some pages appear in more than one section. For example, changes to ocean currents are evidence of climate change, contribute to the causes, and have profound impacts on everything from sea levels and New Zealand’s weather to the oxygen we need to breath and the food we need to grow.