Compared with many other countries at similar latitudes, we have a moderate and equable climate tempered by the large oceans all around. The populated parts of New Zealand do not experience the kinds of prolonged and intense heatwaves and freezing blasts which parts of Europe and North America get.
However, what we luckily miss in terms of temperature extremes is made up for by the sheer changeability of our weather and the increasing frequency of damaging wind and rainstorms.
Flooding has always been our biggest weather-related hazard, with heavy rainfalls and high mountain ranges combining to create raging rivers and devastation downstream. Yet while that risk of severe flooding is rising through climate change, we still do not have a fully integrated hydrological and meteorological service.
Regional councils and civil defence/emergency management bodies are in charge of forecasting and warnings on the hydrological side, while MetService, as the government and World Meteorological Organisation’s accredited warning agency, oversees warnings for the weather event itself.
Crown research institute Niwa is also a repository of hydrological expertise and has a major role to play with its flood modelling.
At the same time as having this disconnect between vital hazard-forecasting functions, a bizarre situation has arisen, and been allowed to continue, in which the larger Niwa has been competing with the smaller state-owned enterprise MetService over routine weather forecasting.
For more than a decade now, taxpayers have been funding, to the tune of many millions of dollars, both organisations, only one of which – MetService – should have been doing this work.
One consequence of this expensive overlap has been unnecessary and occasionally tetchy competition between two organisations which were established out of the old New Zealand Meteorological Service during the science reforms in 1992.
A second has been confusion in the public’s mind as to whether they should be taking heed of forecasts from MetService or Niwa. On a few occasions, Niwa’s incursion into talking and giving advice about approaching storms has potentially had dangerous repercussions, muddying the waters over the official severe weather warnings from MetService.
Niwa was originally intended to undertake atmospheric research. But in 2013 it decided, without seeking approval from the John Key National government, to enter the weather forecasting arena, pitting NiwaWeather against MetService.
Now, at last, the independent review into New Zealand’s forecasting sector, Project Hau Nuku, has reported back to the government. Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins announced late last week what will be done to sort things out and give us the best forecasts we can have. She says the government has agreed "in principle" to roll the MetService into Niwa, pending implementation work and exploring competition and data access issues.
As of yesterday, however, the report had not been released publicly, although MBIE says it will be available "shortly".
It is greatly encouraging to finally see a government prepared to do something about the overlap. However, while it is pleasing to see someone taking the bull by the horns, it is the wrong move to simply allow MetService to be sucked into the Niwa vortex.
Instead, New Zealand needs a whole new agency which combines the research and operational heft of both organisations, one which can build a new culture based on collaboration and not dragged down by the baggage of recent competition.
MetService is a successful commercial business with an international reputation. The government and officials need to be extra careful to protect that brand and its ability to make money.
Allowing Niwa to "acquire" MetService, in Ms Collins’ words, is a lazy option that may be less effective than something new. There also remains the hovering spectre of what Sir Peter Gluckman’s wider science system review might mean down the track for the future of the CRIs. Giving Niwa the dominant hand is like rewarding bad behaviour over many years.
