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Energy and matter
Scale
Patterns
Cause and effect
Stability and Change
Systems
Structure and Function

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playlist of all cross cutting concepts

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People use sand bags when their are floods so the water won't enter their home

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Heavy rainfall is one of the most frequent and widespread severe weather hazards to affect New Zealand. It is defined as rainfall greater than 100 mm in 24 hours.

See MetService's Severe Weather Criteria Chart

In New Zealand, heavy rainfall is relatively common. Often, a significant amount of precipitation occurs in only a few hours, leading to severe flooding and landslide risk.

Causes of heavy rainfall

Heavy rainfall occurs over New Zealand mainly because of the following common weather systems:

ex-tropical cyclones

North Tasman Sea lows moving to NZ region

depression/lows from the south

cold fronts.

New Zealand's mountains tend to modify and amplify precipitation, and this often causes the frequent heavy rainfall we experience. Heavy rainfall tends be most common over the western coastal region of the South Island and the middle and upper North Island, and least common on the east side of the South Island (due to the prevailing westerlies).

Potential consequences of heavy rainfall

Heavy rainfall can lead to numerous hazards, for example:

flooding, including risk to human life, damage to buildings and infrastructure, and loss of crops and livestock

landslides, which can threaten human life, disrupt transport and communications, and cause damage to buildings and infrastructure.

Where heavy rainfall occurs with high winds, risk to forestry crops is high.

Incidences of very heavy rainfall in recent years

In early January 2012, heavy rain warnings were issued around the North Island. The southern Hawkes Bay area was the worst affected, with up to 150mm of rain falling on it over an 18-hour period. Additionally, houses in Wellington lost power as the region's electricity network was disrupted by 'wild weather', including heavy rain and strong winds (Mt Kaukau in Wellington was battered by winds up to 128 km/h: classified as 'hurricane force'). Heavy rainfall was also recoded in Nelson/the Tasman Region in December 2011, with Takaka experiencing the highest 1-day rainfall: 392mm on 14 December.

See our climate summary for December 2011
Heavy rain caused severe floods in Northland (March 2007), when over 40 mm/hr fell for several hours (Figures from Natural Hazards Update 2007)

Very heavy rainfall in mid February 2004 produced the most disastrous floods for many decades in the lower and middle North Island - 235mm fell in 19hrs at Pohangina River / Ruahine range (Fuller & Heerdegen 2005).The cost of damage and economic impact resulting from the floods (and associated wind damage) in the lower North Island was estimated to be close to $300 million (Fuller & Heerdegen 2005).

See our NZ Historic Weather Events Catalog (HWE)

Heavy rainfall research at NIWA

NIWA scientists are currently working within the Reducing the Impact of Weather-Related Hazards Programme to improve hazard mitigation and increase society's resilience to hazards such as heavy rainfall.

To achieve this, we are developing and applying improved weather prediction models capable of accurately forecasting severe events in New Zealand.

Current NIWA research projects

For heavy rainfall specifically, we are:

Developing very high resolution numeric weather prediction (NWP) forecast models and investigating the effects of model resolution on heavy rainfall simulation. Models are run with a resolution of 12km and 1.5km on NIWA's supercomputer.

More information on our supercomputing facility

Improving the model performance by incorporating all available meteorological observationsto generate the initial atmospheric conditions as accurately as possible.

Improving the processes that control the dynamic characteristics and predictability of heavy rainfall in the New Zealand region into the NWP model formulations, including the land surface processes needed.

Developing ensemble methods/forecasts by running the model several times with slightly different initial conditions to increase our confidence in forecasting heavy rainfall.

The output of this research is being incorporated into our environmental forecasting product, EcoConnect.

Additionally, NIWA has analysed measurements of extreme rainfall throughout New Zealand, and developed the free HIRDS software tool to provide public information on the risk of extreme rainfall. HIRDS is regularly used by engineers throughout New Zealand, to assist in designing bridges, culverts and waterways. HIRDS includes an option to make an assessment of the impact of climate change on extreme rainfall.
Visit the HIRDS website

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Heavy rainfall is one of the most frequent and widespread severe weather hazards to affect New Zealand. It is defined as rainfall greater than 100 mm in 24 hours. See MetService's Severe Weather Criteria Chart In New Zealand, heavy rainfall is relatively common.

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The effects that a major rainfall can have on the population is that it could flood homes for humans and animals. The sea level may also increase for a while before it evaporates. The way scientist could use the scale is by measuring the amount of rainfall on the population and see what damage happens during a lot of rainfall. The rainfall may destroy crops and make the soil unusable during crop season. Lava going into the ocean affects the temperature of the ocean. The way that the wildfires in California will change the stability of the environment is the animals will have a hard time finding a new habitat.