Climate wiki "Don't listen to me. Listen to the science” – Greta Thunberg
Climate wiki "Don't listen to me. Listen to the science” – Greta Thunberg
The story of climate change…
…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.
The story of climate change…
…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, 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.

Causes
- A brief history of climate change: who knew what, when
- What causes climate change?
- Would the climate be warming without humans?
- Is it just a cycle? (Earth’s wobbly orbit)
- Sunspots & solar activity
- Land use: agriculture & cities
- Volcanoes
- Ocean currents
- Black carbon & ash
- Blue hydrogen
- Greenhouse gases & how they work
- – Carbon dioxide & the carbon cycle
- – Methane (biogenic & ‘natural’ gas)
- – Nitrous oxide
- – Clouds & water vapour
- – Ozone
- – Man-made industrial chemicals
- – Aerosol pollution
- How to start an Ice Age!
- What’s in a name?
Effects
- Extreme weather (Event Attribution)
- Dangerous tipping points
- Feedback effects of warming
- Antarctic melting
- Greenland melting
- Arctic sea ice loss
- Ocean currents changing
- Melting permafrost & burning ice
- Marine heatwaves
- New Zealand’s disappearing glaciers
- Black carbon & ash on snow
- Oceans becoming more acidic
- Seasons are changing
- How we know about past climates: proxy data
Impacts
- Irreversible tipping points
- Aotearoa’s changing climate
- The forecast for Canterbury
- How hot could it get?
- What will it cost us?
- Floods
- Rising sea levels
- Canterbury sea levels
- Ocean acidfication
- Marine heatwaves
- Ocean currents
- More wildfires, less snow
- Black carbon & ash on snow
- Losing our glaciers
- Animal & plants moving or dying
- Biodiversity vanishing
- Broken life-support systems
- More diseases and pandemics
- Vanishing Arctic ice impacts NZ
Response
- What is being done?
- Adaptation
- IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- Managed retreat from coasts and rivers
- Plant trees…but mostly pines!
- The emissions trading scheme: ETS
- The ‘carbon free’ economy
- Carbon capture & storage
- Enhanced mineral weathering
- Forecasting the future: NZ climate models
- The Paris Agreement
- NDCs: Nationally Determined Contributions
- Governments are bankrupting the carbon budget
- New Zealand policies & strategies
- Climate Change Commission
- Brief history of climate change: who knew what, when
Adaptation
- Adaptation on North Canterbury Coast: Tūhairara Coastal Park
- Retreating from coasts and rivers
- Exemplar Climate Adaptation Plan
- ECan: adaptation actions by local authorities
- Aotearoa New Zealand’s First National Adaptation Plan
- Coastal Adaptation: What does success look like
- Optmal Adaptation to Uncertain Climate Change
- NIWA: Serious games as a tool to engage people
- National Science Challenges (NSC): Innovations for adaptation
- NSC: Adaptation planning – communities
- NSC: Adaptation planning – maraes
- NSC: Embedding adaptation
- NSC: Vision Mātauranga Future Pathways
- Adaptive tools: water infrastructure compounded by climate change
- Maladaptation: ‘Carbon mining’ short term gain, long term pain
- Maladaptation: Coastal wetlands left high and dry under Ministry proposals
- Ngāi Tahu: Climate Change Strategy
- Loss and damage: What happens when climate change destroys lives and cultures?
Innovation
- Start here: overview
- Carbon Capture and Storage
- Storing CO2 in our rocks
- Carbon negative concrete
- Enhanced mineral weathering: store carbon in basalt soil fertiliser
- Biocement: bricks grown from microorganisms
- Blue carbon: seaweed/kelp
- Fungi absorbs 30% of emissions annually
- Hydrogen: blue, grey, red & green
- ___________________
- Add lime to reverse ocean acidification: field research
- Agrivoltaics on Canterbury farm
- Algae that cleans waterways & provides energy
- Artificial reefs to grow food and protect coasts
- Artificial reefs made from shellfish
- Breaking Boundaries: how you can be part of the solution
- Callaghan Innovation: clean tech NZ
- Carbon Crop: carbon farming assessment
- Carbon negative bio-thermoplastic
- Cellular agriculture: lab grown meat & milk (PDF NZ Govt)
- Climate Leaders Coalition NZ
- Creating Azola forests
- CO2 storage in the ocean + simultaneous deacidification (MIT PDF)
- Dunite: storing carbon in agricultural soils
- EECA: Energy Efficiency Authority
- EmGuard: NZ made biodegradable plant guards
- Environmental Defence Society
- Farm actions: assessing how nature-friendly they are
- Fungi-based packaging alternatives
- Generation Less
- GIDI: NZ Govt. investment in decarbonising industry
- Geoengineering
- Geoengineering: proposed principles
- International legal action to ‘stop ecocide’
- Landcare Research: greenhouse gases
- Nature-based solutions for our changing cities
- NIWA: climate research
- NZ Lawyers for Climate Action
- Policy & planning: how to avoid maladaptation
- Project Drawdown
- Reducing nitrous oxide in agriculture
- Reducing methane from cows
- Regenerative agriculture: National Science Challenges
- Regenerative agriculture: Quorum Sense
- RethinkX: disruptive technologies
- Sustainable Seas: National Science Challenge
- Transition Engineering: AEMS lab NZ
- 100% compostable drink bottles made in NZ