WELLINGTON, July 3 (Xinhua) -- As global temperatures continue to rise, New Zealand will experience more wet and dry weather extremes, according to a study published on Wednesday which showed how a warming climate will impact the country's wet and dry weather extremes.
The study uses a larger set of climate model data than what has previously been available to show how frequently New Zealand regions experience high and low rainfall extremes in a warmer world through quantifying for the first time how the unevenness of the rainfall across a year is expected to change with a 3 degrees Celsius rise in global temperature.
The leading author, Luke Harrington, senior lecturer in climate change at the University of Waikato's School of Science, said many regions experience significant changes in the amount of rain falling during both the wettest and driest spells, despite having shown only a minor change in annual average rainfall.
For many regions, average annual rainfall is not expected to change in a warmer world. But zooming into what that might look like on a day-to-day basis, their wettest days of the year will produce at least 10 percent more rainfall than in the current climate, and their driest days of the year will produce at least 10 percent less, said the study published in the Environmental Research Letters.
"We find more extreme dry spells punctuated by increasingly supercharged rainfall events," Harrington said, adding the study gives decision-makers the power to plan for the future.
"A common phrase to explain climate change is 'the wet get wetter and the dry get drier,'" said University of Canterbury Professor Dave Frame who was also involved in the study.
The research shows people can expect the worst of both worlds to happen simultaneously for many New Zealand regions as temperatures continue to rise, Frame said. ■