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, 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.
The causes
- What causes climate change?
- Would the climate be warming without humans?
- Is it ‘just’ a cycle? Milankovitch
- Sunspots & solar activity
- Land use: agriculture & cities
- Volcanoes
- Ocean currents
- Black carbon & ash
- Greenhouse gases & how they work
- – Carbon dioxide & the carbon cycle
- – Methane
- – Nitrous oxide
- – Clouds & water vapour
- – Ozone
- – Man-made industrial chemicals
- How to start an Ice Age!
- What’s in a name?
The impacts
- Exceeding planetary boundaries
- Aotearoa’s changing climate
- The forecast for Canterbury
- How hot could it get?
- What will it cost us?
- Floods: more & bigger
- Rising sea levels
- Canterbury sea levels
- Increasingly acidic oceans
- Marine heatwaves
- Changing ocean currents
- More wildfires, less snow
- Black carbon & ash on snow
- Losing our glaciers
- Animals & plants are moving
- Biodiversity vanishing
- Broken life-support systems
- More diseases and pandemics
The evidence
- How we know if extreme weather is due to climate change
- Planetary boundaries & dangerous tipping points
- Warming feedback effects
- 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
- IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Our response
- What are we doing about it?
- Adaptation: retreating from coasts and rivers
- A brief history of climate change: who knew what, when
- Plant trees…but mostly pines?
- The emissions trading scheme: ETS
- The ‘carbon free’ economy
- Negative emissions technology
- Predicting the future climate: how climate models work
- What local people are doing
- Restoring nature, our climate superhero
- IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- The Paris Agreement
- NDCs: Nationally Determined Contributions
- COP26: Bankrupting the carbon budget
- COP26: Outcomes and pledges
- New Zealand policies & strategies
- Climate Change Commission
INNOVATION
- Start here
- Negative emissions technology
- Storing CO2 in our rocks
- Carbon negative concrete
- Biocement: bricks grown from microorganisms
- Cellular agriculture: lab grown meat & milk
- Blue carbon: seaweed
- ___________________
- Adaptation: NZ National Science Challenges
- Breaking Boundaries: how you can be part of the solution
- Callaghan Innovation: clean tech NZ
- Carbon Crop: carbon farming assessment
- Carbon negative bio-thermoplastic
- Climate Leaders Coalition NZ
- Creating Azola forests
- EECA: Energy Efficiency Authority
- EmGuard: NZ made biodegradable plant guards
- Environmental Defence Society
- Fungi-based packaging alternatives
- Generation Less
- GIDI: NZ Govt. investment in decarbonising industry
- Geoengineering
- Landcare Research: greenhouse gases
- International legal action to ‘stop ecocide’
- NIWA: climate research
- NZ Lawyers for Climate Action
- Policy & planning: how to avoid maladaptation
- Project Drawdown
- Reducing nitrous oxide in agriculture
- 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