NIWA

A new online tool that identifies areas at risk from groundwater flooding has been developed by New Zealand scientists. 💡 The Shallow Groundwater Screening Tool identifies areas at threat from water table rises, based on existing groundwater measurements, and will help hazard and land-use decision-makers understand the scale of the problem and which areas are likely to be the most vulnerable. ⚠️ Groundwater rises with sea levels, particularly in coastal and low-lying areas, and can be pushed even higher by persistent rainfall. Groundwater flooding is often overlooked as a threat, however it is a hazard that traditional flood defences such as stopbanks and seawalls cannot contain because the water comes up from underneath. High groundwater causes soggy ground, water ponding, surface flooding after heavy rain and, as a result, damage to assets such as roads, underground infrastructure and building foundations. 💧 It’s not all bad though, shallow groundwater can be beneficial for some ecosystems and for buffering droughts. The tool was developed as part of the NIWA-led Future Coasts Aotearoa research programme in collaboration with Kōmanawa Solutions Ltd, GNS Science and the University of Canterbury. Find out more about the tool here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/ehtFE6Vc Read the full story here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/e-FcJEKp

Seabed 2030 is a global, collaborative project with the goal of producing a definitive map of the world ocean floor by 2030 using bathymetric data. Currently 26.1% of the global ocean floor has been mapped. 🗺️ To help with the effort, an initiative was created to support seafarers to collect bathymetric data as they travel the seas. The crowdsourced bathymetry initiative engages all sorts of vessels including yachts, fishing vessels, cruise ships and more to help fill the gaps. ⛵ 🚤 To support those interested in contributing crowdsourced data, an in-depth workshop was held at NIWA Wellington last week, bringing together participants from around the world to showcase and explore crowdsourced bathymetry tools, data collection and management. Participants had the chance to take part in on-the-water demonstrations of data collection and logger installations on NIWA’s Rukuwai II in Wellington’s Evan’s Bay and learn about best practices for data collection and processing. 💻 The workshop was co-hosted by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) Crowdsourced Bathymetry Working Group, NIWA and Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand. Find out more about the initiative here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gdNVyFXX 📸 Luke McPake & Ryan Willoughby

Measuring methane from the ground, air and space. 🛩️ Why did NIWA researchers fit out a Cessna 185 with specialist methane-measuring equipment and fly back and forth across Canterbury recently? Tracking methane emissions is a bit like finding a leak. If it’s a fire hydrant gushing water, it’s easy to spot. But if it’s a damp patch in your garden from a slow hose leak, you need more precise tools to track where the water is coming from. That’s what NIWA researchers are doing with methane in the atmosphere. MethaneSAT, a satellite designed to detect large-scale emissions from oil and gas operations, is great at spotting these big ‘fire hydrant’ leaks. But agricultural emissions are more like that slow underground leak – dispersed and harder to pinpoint. As part of the MethaneSAT agricultural research programme, led by NIWA with funding administered by MBIE Science and Innovation, the researchers were measuring methane in the atmosphere across Canterbury to help validate the satellite’s observations as it passed overhead. 🛰️ As well as measuring methane from the Cessna, the successful field campaign involved measuring methane from the ground via four high-tech instruments called EM27/SUN spectrometers. Methane is an important greenhouse gas contributing to climate change and is responsible for almost half of New Zealand’s emissions. Validating the satellite’s accuracy for a country like New Zealand, where we already have excellent information about our methane emissions, means the data can be relied on in countries where emissions profiles are less well known. Ultimately this will help to identify hot spots for methane emissions and help focus global efforts to reduce these. 🌏 Thanks to the University of Wollongong, Australia and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) for the loan of additional spectrometers. 📸 Stuart Mackay

Four NIWA researchers have returned from the depths of the Puysegur Trench, diving to over 6,000 metres in the submersible Fendouzhe. 🌊   Daniel Leduc, Sadie Mills, Owen Anderson and Caroline Chin joined their Chinese colleagues as the first humans to explore the area at this depth and see the unique diversity of marine life. 👀 The Puysegur Trench lies off the southwest of New Zealand and has never been explored using a human operated submersible. Each dive took around 8 to 10 hours to complete and the team came back with never-before-seen footage of the trench, the first ever biological specimens from the area and the first high-resolution maps of the surrounding seafloor. 📽️ Deployed from the research vessel, Tan Suo Yi Hao, the Fendouzhe is the only research-focused submersible worldwide capable of diving to the deepest parts of the ocean. 🌏   The voyage was part of an ongoing collaboration between NIWA and the Chinese Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering and also included experts from Te Papa Tongarewa and scientists from across the world. 📸 Ryan Willoughby & Daniel Leduc

Today is the first United Nations World Day for Glaciers. Globally, glaciers are receding at unprecedented rates, with impacts on sea-level rise, water resources, hazards, ecosystems and livelihoods. Glaciers in Aotearoa New Zealand are not exempt from this global trend. 📉 Earlier this month, researchers from NIWA, Canterbury University, University of Otago and Victoria University of Wellington, carried out their annual end-of-summer snowline aerial survey, monitoring 50 glaciers across the Southern Alps. ❄️ These surveys involve measuring how much of the previous winter’s snow is remaining on the glaciers and how much snow and ice have melted away during the summer. To remain healthy, glaciers need to retain snow over approximately two-thirds of their surface area. However, in recent years the researchers have found that very little or no snow at all has survived our warm summer temperatures. Dr Andrew Lorrey, NIWA Principal Scientist - Climate and Environment, says, “I’ve led NIWA’s End of Summer Snowline and glacier survey for the past 16 years. Since the time I’ve been involved, we’ve seen widespread disappearance of Southern Alps ice as the summer snowline has rapidly risen in the mountains. “Increasing temperatures, particularly during the warmer months from October through February, have led to this situation. Repeated, extremely hot conditions accompanying marine heatwaves have been hammering the health of our glaciers. Years with near average temperatures or below average temperatures are too few and far between to limit or reverse the damage done.” https://lnkd.in/duc7zH8w 📸 Dr Andrew Lorrey

A small marine creature from New Zealand has been named as one of the top ten new marine species of 2024. 🎉 Rhabdopleura emancipata is a pterobranch – a tiny, colonial, filter-feeding marine animal that lives on the seafloor inside a tube it secretes. The new species was described by NIWA taxonomist Dennis Gordon and National University of Singapore scientists Danwei Huang and Randolph Quek and was selected by the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) for the 2024 top ten marine species list. 🌊 Rhabdopleura is the only living genus of an extinct group of ancient relatives called graptolites, that were abundant in the Paleozoic era. Ancient graptolites were planktonic, or branched along the seafloor like most modern Rhabdopleura. But Rhabdopleura emancipata colonies are, uniquely, made up of an erect 3D tangle of branches that attract other small organisms to settle on them. The discovery of this new species will help scientists better understand the biology of living graptolites. New Zealand has five named species of these ancient creatures in our waters (out of a global total of 12) and at least five other new native species awaiting further study and naming. To highlight and celebrate the work of taxonomists, WoRMS releases the list of the top ten marine species described in the past year to coincide with World Taxonomist Appreciation Day – today! Thanks to all taxonomists for their incredibly important mahi! 👏 Check out the top ten list here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eUka2-Yz

New Zealand could face twice as many of the most extreme atmospheric rivers by the end of the century. NIWA researchers analysed the frequency and intensity of atmospheric rivers under a relatively high greenhouse gas emissions future in the climate projections released last year by NIWA and the Ministry for the Environment | Manatū mō te Taiao. 🌧️ "Atmospheric rivers have been responsible for some of our biggest downpours in recent years... As an island nation surrounded by oceans, we experience atmospheric rivers when huge amounts of water vapour are transported down from the tropics and sub-tropics and make landfall. These 'rivers in the sky' can cause heavy precipitation and flooding, producing extremely large rainfall totals, especially when they interact with mountainous terrain," says NIWA climate scientist Dr Peter Gibson. As well as finding that the most intense atmospheric rivers are likely to be more frequent and more intense, the researchers say that the phenomena may add up to 20 percent more to annual rainfall totals in some places. 📈 "Overall, the biggest hotspot for these future changes is over the west coast of the South Island, where atmospheric rivers already often produce the largest impacts," says Dr Gibson. The work is published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gUgftm23 🎞️ An example of an extreme atmospheric river impacting New Zealand in high-resolution climate model simulations produced at NIWA. White shading shows elevated atmospheric water vapour and red shading shows extreme rainfall.

Our new supercomputer is nearly up and running. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the assembly of the powerful Generation IV supercomputer. 🎞️⬇️ The new computer will have 2.5 to 3 times more generational power than its predecessor, allowing for higher resolution, more frequent processing and additional AI workloads. 🖥️ 

Stuff of nightmares or much-loved native? 🤨    Much-loved native of course! The owner of this toothy grin is a treasured native freshwater fish, the lamprey (𝘎𝘦𝘰𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴). Don’t worry if you see these special fish in our waterways, they won’t bite you! 🦷 Why does their mouth look like that? 🤔 Lamprey spend around 3-4 years of their lives at sea. During this time, they feed parasitically, using their toothy mouth to attach themselves to fish and marine mammals and suck their blood and flesh. 🩸   Don’t judge them for their unique appearance though – lamprey have a caring side. 🥰   Upon returning to freshwater to breed, both the male and female will guard and care for their nest of eggs for up to seven weeks until they hatch. Both die shortly after the larvae leave the nest. They are the only species of lamprey known worldwide to display parental care. 🥹❤️   👑 That’s crown-worthy behaviour right there. We're backing the lamprey in this year's Fish of the Year competition – swim over to the website and vote lamprey! ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eS_8FgYB

Scientists from NIWA and researchers from Victoria University of Wellington and Department of Conservation (DOC) carried out an aerial survey of the end-of-summer snowline and glacier survey over the weekend. This annual flight over the South Island's glaciers helps them to determine how much of the previous winter snowpack has survived the summer melt season. 🛩️❄️ The survey has been running since 1977 and, in that time, it's estimated that almost 300 glaciers have been lost due to our warming climate. Find out more in this piece for The Conversation here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eg-gVTsD