State Highway 1 near Seddon. Photo / Supplied via Daniel Puha
State Highway 1 near Seddon. Photo / Supplied via Daniel Puha
As an atmospheric river lashes the country, we have 675,000 New Zealanders continuing to live in areas prone to flooding.
Speaking to the Front Page podcast, NZ Herald science reporter Jamie Morton says that unless action is taken we could be facing a crisis in the coming years.
"A 2020 Government risk assessment found that 675,000 Kiwis live in areas that are already prone to flooding – and a further 72,000 people are living in the firing line of where some of the most dramatic effects of sea-level rise could hit," Morton says.
Going by international climate commitments today, we could expect global oceans to climb by about 60cm before this century's end.
But large parts of the country could see double that - or about 1.2m - due to ongoing land subsidence.
The problem is that the impact of Covid-19 had pushed back the development of a national adaptation plan to deal with that threat.
"Right now, we're in a position where councils are looking to the Government to guide them on what will essentially make the leaky building fiasco look trivial in comparison.
"Experts like Dr Judy Lawrence at Victoria University say that we should not be waiting and that councils should be getting more proactive right now."
Morton says the factors that have contributed to the "atmospheric river" currently drenching the country aren't going to disappear any time soon.
"We know that the warming of our planet is contributing to more heat on the surface of the ocean," says Morton.
"Every degree of heating adds about 7 per cent more moisture into the atmosphere – and the result is always going to be more extreme rainfall. And that's why scientists expect that atmospheric rivers like this one are only going to become more intense over time."
Morton says that the evidence is clear on the fact the climate is changing and that this will lead to more extreme weather events.
"Worldwide the warmest seven years have all been since 2015. And here in New Zealand our hottest year on record only happened to be last year."
Because we've seen so many extraordinary weather events in recent years, there is a growing concern that New Zealanders are becoming more complacent – and accepting the extreme as normal.
"There's a widely used metaphor of the frog in the boiling pot," says Morton.
"A frog sitting in a pot will become complacent to the heating water around it before finally being boiled in the pot. And there's a lot of research to explain why this complacency exists. In the US for instance, people base their perception of normal weather on what's happened in just the past two to eight years."
Morton says that the disconnect with the historical climate obscures the public's perception of what normal looks like.
While average Kiwis are becoming more accepting of these extreme weather events, it often pays to keep an eye on what those in the business of risk are doing.
Insurance companies have started to change their policies to reflect the growing risk posed by these events.
"Tower last year became New Zealand's first insurance company to introduce [flood risk rating], so they've essentially modelling risk right across the country – especially in terms of flooding," says Morton.
He adds that it's likely that we will see more changes in insurance policies in the coming years as these companies look to prepare for the growing regularity of extreme weather events.
• The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.
