Climate Prescience Limited Smart Ideas funded projects

Aotearoa, New Zealand, holds a unique position globally, experiencing slower climatic warming compared to many other regions. However, extreme weather events like the Auckland Anniversary floods and Cyclone Gabrielle starkly underscore our vulnerability to climate change and the significant economic costs it imposes.Our research introduces a novel approach using ‘chiral climate twins’ to predict the future impacts of extreme weather events across New Zealand. By analyzing data from analogous locations in Europe—regions that historically shared similar climates with New Zealand but have warmed more rapidly—we can gain valuable insights into the varied impacts of extreme weather events and their economic implications.Currently, limitations in economic modelling of the costs of future extreme weather events hinder effective planning. The chiral climate twin method will provide real-world foresight to address this gap, enhancing New Zealand’s financial security and economic resilience. This innovative approach will enable better utilization of global climate data to assess the economic risks associated with a warming climate, providing a huge return on MBIE's research investment.Ultimately, our project will equip communities, businesses, and Government institutions with advanced tools to anticipate and mitigate the physical and economic threats posed by climate change. With this improved foreknowledge, Aotearoa will be better positioned to safeguard its economy, strengthen resilience, and ensure fiscal readiness to navigate the escalating challenges of a changing climate.For more information on this project, contact nathanael@climateprescience.com

The physical impacts of climate change will continue to affect us all, from shifting extreme weather events to changes in our seasons. However, understanding climate change information remains challenging and restricts an organisation’s ability to prepare and adapt to climate change.

Traditional climate change assessments can be over 100 pages long, containing maps of average changes to weather variables like temperature and precipitation. We see two disadvantages with this approach:

Traditional climate change assessments only help large organisations that already understand their relationship with climate. For example, it is unclear what an average increase of 1°C or 40mm of rainfall means to Kiwi organisations wishing to build resilience, adapt, and thrive in a changing climate.

We don’t live in an average climate; we experience weather events and an uncertain future; average maps in traditional climate change assessments fail to capture and convey this information.

We will develop a new technique to project the seasonal temperature and precipitation cycles to address these issues. These projections will be available via the Climate Shift Forecaster, an online platform where users can search their local and global locations of interest and determine their climate shift percentages.

Our research will collaborate with leading Aotearoa and UK climate scientists and be stress tested against results from full climate change risk assessments that Climate Prescience routinely produces. To learn more about our research, contact nathanael@climateprescience.com