Rudman's city: Desperate measure to make Wellington hot

By BRIAN RUDMAN

David Baylis from sultry Devonport was couched in front of his television just before Xmas watching a street interview from the capital. Warm in his T-shirt and shorts, he noted the Wellingtonians, all wrapped up against the weather, and congratulated himself on his good sense in moving north some time before.

Then on came the weather show with the news that Wellington and Auckland had, that day, allegedly shared the same highest temperature.

It wasn't the first time he'd raised his eyebrows at the MetService-supplied television weather statistics, but this time he decided to probe a bit deeper and what he discovered raised not only his eyebrows, but his hackles as well.

Wellington, he discovered, has pulled a swifty with the help of the MetService, in the way temperatures are collected for use on television news.

Now we all know the dreadful trouble the capital has with its self-esteem. You only have to read all the Maoist-type self-improvement slogans plastered around the city ordering them to be absolutely positive about themselves to appreciate that.

But holding the bulb of the weather thermometer to squeeze an extra degree or two on to Wellington's weather score each night, does seem to be going a bit far. For that, it seems, is what is happening.

It was in the reign of the recently departed Mayor Blumsky that it all began. Not happy with the readings from traditional weather recording stations at the airport, the Kelburn hills and Lower Hutt, he went to MetService and demanded they find a warmer spot.

The government-owned and Wellington-based company said they would put one anywhere Mayor Blumsky suggested, as long as he paid the $100,000 set-up costs and it met certain guidelines such as being sited over grass.

How about the little bit of lawn in front of the Michael Fowler Centre? asked Mr Blumsky. Fine, said the MetService, and so it was.

Across in the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, another Government-owned company, this development was rather frowned upon. They see the monitoring of weather as a long-term affair and they go out of their way to take recordings from sites which aren't open to any urban influence at all.

Otherwise, says senior scientist Jim Salinger, you can end up with artificial warming because of heat islands created by the presence of heat-collecting concrete and the wind-blocking effects of buildings. Buildings like the Michael Fowler Centre act as a very effective buffer against the cooling southerlies that, rumour has it, batter the capital from time to time.

Dr Salinger says what's happened in Wellington is akin to finding a grassed site in front of Aotea Square, or a nice sheltered spot in Christchurch's Cathedral Square. "I call this temperature for tourism."

He says the Michael Fowler site is about 1.5 deg C warmer than Kelburn and about half a degree above the airport site.

If we Aucklanders wanted to get tricky, we could raise our televised temperature by around 1.5 degrees by fronting up the cash for an urban site. Or, if we wanted to be absolutely positively naughty, we could set up one on Waiheke Island, which, according to MetService's Auckland ambassador Bob McDavitt, enjoys a climate on average 3 degrees warmer than the rest of Auckland City.

But somehow we don't seem very perturbed at Wellington's sad attempts to make itself hot.

We did, it seems, have an inner-city weather recording site up on Ponsonby Rd once, but the lease ran out and no one saw the need to come up with the money needed to move it. We knew we were hot anyway. As for the commercially minded MetService, well, they saw no money in it for them.

To be fair, Wellington's not the only place to try to massage its weather figures.

There are files going back more than 100 years recording anguished mayors claiming their little empires are warmer than the official records.

Over the past two or three years since Wellington got its way, other cold places have joined in the rather pathetic con.

New Plymouth and Hastings have both paid up for a new site.

Kaikoura tried to do one on the cheap, but their computer link to the MetService has broken down.

At this moment, there's apparently a similar flurry going on down in Tauranga. McDavitt says it happens every year around this time, small towns claiming they're hotter than the weather statistics say they are.

The MetService reply is: front up with a suitable site and $100,000 and they're on. And here I was thinking that global warming was all to do with sheep farting.