With extraordinary rainfall hitting the North Island this summer, especially in the Far North and East Cape, attention is being drawn to the impacts of climate change on rainfall.
Every additional degree of global warming could add between five and 15% of rainfall to the average, making extreme weather events such as the January flooding increasingly devastating.
"It's the heat from the oceans that was evaporated, when the condensation occurs in rain it fuels tropical storms, and that's why it's related to global warming," University of Auckland's Kevin Trenberth said.
Cyclone Gabrielle is passing over seas that are up to 2C warmer than usual, elevating its intensity.
"If anything, climate change may decrease the likelihood of cyclones forming in the Central Pacific," NIWA principal climate scientist Sam Dean said.
"But when they do happen, they tend to carry more rain and the most intense ones are expected to be much stronger."
Tropical cyclones like Gabrielle, when they do form, could take longer to clear, prevented by moving on by stronger bands of warm air — making for more hot, humid and grey North Island summer like this year's.
"Warming is going to keep on going up for a while, but we can actually make it so the impacts go down from each successive event. You just have to plan and prepare for it," Waikato University's Luke Harrington said.
Disaster preparedness is key, but the future of extreme weather events will ultimately depend on whether the world manages to reduce its emissions.
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