Why New Zealand’s Climate Minister James Shaw blasted the parliament for Cyclone Gabrielle

New Zealand’s Northland and Auckland have seen unusual weather this summer. While Auckland faced flash floods after heavy downpours last month- making it the wettest January for the city on record, North Island is seeing extreme devastation being left in its wake by the intense Cyclone Gabrielle during what was always considered one of the driest parts of the year in the region. 

After changing from a tropical cyclone to a strong subtropical storm, Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand on February 11. The devastation led to numerous flights being canceled, widespread power outages and major damage to roads, residences, and infrastructure, and at least 5 people being reported dead. 

Gabrielle’s strength is attributed to the protracted La Nina conditions too.

Dr Dáithí Stone, a climate scientist with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has been quoted as saying “Each summer, Northland and Auckland are usually on the verge of drought, with a pretty severe one experienced just three years ago. Not this summer.”

What did Shaw say?

The disaster wreaked by the cyclone led to New Zealand’s climate minister James Shaw telling the parliament that he believed climate change is “clearly here now,” and any more delay or inaction will only make it worse. 

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was also quoted as saying that this has been the most significant weather event the country has seen “this century” and that “extensive” damage had made it clear the country was unprepared for extreme weather events – and there is a lot of work to be done.

In order to achieve a goal of net zero emissions by 2050, the New Zealand government issued its first emissions reduction plan in 2022. It also unveiled a national adaptation plan to lessen potential climate catastrophes. The implementation will probably be faster than was intended now that the island country is witnessing such extreme weather events. 

CNN quoted James Renwick, a weather and climate researcher at Victoria University of Wellington, who said the destruction inflicted by Cyclone Gabrielle on top of January’s Auckland floods, has been interpreted by many as a wake-up call on climate change.

Talking about the towns and cities that have come up on the banks of rivers fed by intense rainfall in the country’s mountainous region, Renwick added “New Zealand is very good at building communities on floodplains – there’s a large fraction of the population that live close to rivers that tend to flood. There tends to be the attitude that we can build stop banks and that will protect the community, and it does most of the time until you get a really big event.”

New Zealand is situated in the South Pacific Ocean and is vulnerable to tropical cyclones that typically form in the north but can affect any part of the country in its path. Such events are expected to get more frequent as global temperatures increase, the report states. 

The connection between Cyclones and Climate Change 

A study states that cyclones are not brought on by climate change, but it does increase their intensity. The sea surface provides energy for tropical cyclones, and the warmer the water, the more energy gets available. This results in storms that are stronger and develop more quickly. 

A study published in Science saw a ‘marked slowdown of tropical cyclones as the world warms, due to a poleward shift of the mid-latitude westerly winds.’ The researchers ran about 100 high-resolution simulations about the behavior of tropical cyclones in three types of conditions: between 1950 and 2000, the present, and various future scenarios. 

The study found that anthropogenic warming could slow down tropical cyclones near populated mid-latitude regions in Asia and North America. 

Climate Fact Checks had earlier published a Fact Check on the claim that Climate Change has no effect on events like hurricanes. While the major focus in the case of discussing and analyzing the impacts of climate change on hurricanes has been about the picking up of heat and moisture as they churn over the ocean, studies have now pointed out the fact that hurricanes are increasingly moving slower after making landfall because of climate change. 

According to a study published in Nature, a typical storm, 50 years ago, would have lost more than three-quarters of its intensity in the first 24 hours but now its intensity would only be half lessened causing them to weaken more slowly and remain destructive for longer.

A slow-moving tropical cyclone or hurricane will dump much more rain in one place than a similar fast-moving one. The winds will also hit against structures longer and can do more damage. Scientists found that this is giving cyclones and hurricanes a greater opportunity to strengthen and destroy. 

This summer, sea surface temperatures in New Zealand have reached record highs. 

Heavy rainfall, like the recent deluge in Auckland that caused severe flooding, is a result of hot air holding more moisture. Researchers have discovered that up to 10 to 20% of such rain was probably caused by climate change.