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Motueka Valley bracing for more floods while still in recovery

Motueka Valley bracing for more floods while still in recovery

RNZ News11 hours ago

After a weekend of major flooding, Motueka Valley residents are already being warned to brace for yet another potential deluge later this week. The area has been one of the hardest hit by flooding after the Motueka River burst its banks amid torrential rain on Friday and into Saturday. Nick James reports.
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NZ cities are getting hotter: 5 things councils can do now to keep us cooler when summer comes
NZ cities are getting hotter: 5 things councils can do now to keep us cooler when summer comes

RNZ News

time8 hours ago

  • RNZ News

NZ cities are getting hotter: 5 things councils can do now to keep us cooler when summer comes

By Timothy Welch of Summer in Wellington. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King Stand on any car park on a sunny day in February and the heat will radiate through your shoes. At 30C air temperature, that asphalt hits 50-55C - hot enough to cause second-degree burns to skin in seconds. Right now, in the northern hemisphere summer, 100 million Americans are dealing with 38C temperatures. Britain is preparing for hundreds of heat deaths . In New Zealand, of course, we're still lighting fires and complaining about the cold. But that gives us time to prepare for our own heatwaves. Open-air car parks that sit empty for 20 hours a day could become cooling infrastructure instead. Transport routes can become cooling corridors. Replace asphalt with trees, grass and permeable surfaces, and you can drop surface temperatures by 12C. It's not complicated. It's not even expensive. NIWA data shows New Zealand is already experiencing extreme temperatures five times more frequently than historical baselines. Wellington hit 30.3C and Hamilton 32.9C in January, both all-time records. Marine heatwaves are persisting around South Island coasts months longer than usual. Aucklanders will face 48 additional days above 25C annually by 2099, as summer temperatures increase by 3.6C. Auckland Council has already adopted the most severe warming scenario (3.8C) for infrastructure planning, acknowledging previous models underestimated the pace of change. Even Wellington's famously cool winds won't offset the estimated 79 percent increase in residential cooling energy demand by 2090, driven by hotter, longer summers and more extreme-heat days. A quarter of New Zealand's population will be over 65 by 2043, an age when heat regulation becomes harder and fixed incomes make cooling costs a real burden. Currently, 14 heat-related deaths occur annually among Auckland's over-65 population when temperatures exceed just 20C. As the mercury rises, our older population will be at a greater risk. While global average temperature increases of 1.5C might appear modest, the actual temperatures we experience in our cities is far more extreme. The built environment - all that concrete and asphalt - traps heat like an oven. But converting car parks back to green space can knock the temperature down dramatically. Research from Osaka Prefecture in Japan recorded surface temperature reductions of up to 14.7C when comparing asphalt to grass-covered parking during sunny summer conditions. Another study found temperature differences averaging 11.79C between asphalt and grass surfaces, with air temperature differences of 7-8C at human height. Trees are the heavy lifters here. Stand under a tree on a hot day, and it can feel 17C cooler than standing in the sun . Add rain gardens (shallow, planted areas designed to capture and filter stormwater) and ground cover for another 2-4C reduction. Layer these elements together, and you get cooling that works even on overcast days. Grassy and tree-covered car parks are just a starting point. Auckland's 7800 kilometres of roads could become the city's cooling system. Every bus lane, cycleway and walking path is an opportunity for green infrastructure. If we stop thinking of transport corridors as merely a way to get from one place to another, and see them as multifunctional cooling networks, the possibilities multiply while the costs remain relatively low. Melbourne's Covid-era parklet programme proved this works: 594 small conversions created 15,000 square metres of public space at just A$300-900 per square metre. Converting even a small percentage of New Zealand's parking infrastructure could create connected cooling corridors throughout our cities. Protecting cycleways with a tree canopy would encourage active transport while cooling neighbourhoods. Bus lanes with rain garden medians would improve service reliability while managing stormwater. Summer is six months away - maybe not enough time to do all the work needed, but certainly enough to get a plan in place. Here are five things councils could do. Auckland Council's NZ$1 billion climate action package includes grants of $1000 to $50,000 for climate projects. Wellington's Climate and Sustainability Fund and Christchurch's 50-year Urban Forest Plan provide similar frameworks. The Ministry for the Environment's National Policy Statement on Urban Development creates opportunity by removing minimum parking requirements. This frees up land for trees, gardens and public spaces instead of underused asphalt, maximising climate co-benefits: cooler surfaces, better stormwater management and more pleasant streetscapes. By next February, we can either be thanking ourselves for planting trees and converting car parks, or feeling the heat from that 50C asphalt. * Timothy Welch is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This story was originally published on The Conversation.

Animal rescue sanctuary destroyed by flood waters
Animal rescue sanctuary destroyed by flood waters

RNZ News

time12 hours ago

  • RNZ News

Animal rescue sanctuary destroyed by flood waters

A Marlborough animal rescue has lost all its feed in flood waters which also destroyed farm equipment and shelters as the property was swamped. Te Paranui Animal and Farm Sanctuary near Koromiko is home to about 50 animals. Animals and the volunteers were left sheltering on an island of land surrounded by a moat of flood waters after a raft of wild weather. Now, more heavy rain is expected later in the week. Sanctuary manager Alex Radford spoke to Lisa Owen. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.

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