Science Media Centre

There are numerous ways New Zealand can tackle climate change, says a new report, but we must act now. The Royal Society of New Zealand’s climate mitigation report, launched this morning, outlines how New Zealand can shift to a low-carbon economy, reducing greenhouse gas emission across a range of sectors, including: heat supply electricity supply […]

Antarctica’s large land-based ice sheets may be more vulnerable to increasing global temperatures than previously thought, according to new research from New Zealand, US and European scientists. Analysing drill cores of Antarctic rock, they found that Antarctica became its warmest ever 15 million years ago  when carbon dioxide levels were 500ppm – only slightly higher […]

As the COP21 climate negotiations gather pace in Paris, new research suggests global carbon emissions are projected to fall in 2015. This drop in emissions is a turnaround from the more than 2 per cent growth seen on average for the previous decade. It also comes at a time when the world is experiencing global […]

A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has suggested that current climate models have underestimated how much carbon dioxide plants absorb, therefore overstating how much of the gas is actually in the atmosphere. The scientists say current forecasts don’t account for the slow diffusion of atmospheric carbon dioxide inside plant leaves, […]

The release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s third and final fifth assessment (AR5) report has garnered much media attention in New Zealand. The Working Group 3 report on greenhouse gas mitigation was finalised in Berlin this week and outlines the research showing that stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere requires […]

Technological fixes to combat harmful effects of climate change — even if employed on a massive scale — will be ineffective in the face of ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions, new research suggests. A study from German researchers published this week in Nature Communications found no more than an 8% reduction in warming could result from […]

New research indicates that the latest observations of the climate system’s response to rising greenhouse gas levels are consistent with conventional estimates despite a “warming pause” over the past decade. However, the most extreme rates of warming predicted by the current generation of climate models over 50- to 100-year timescales are looking less likely. The […]

Australian scientists are claiming success following completion of a New Zealand-backed pilot carbon capture and storage project that saw thousands of tonnes of carbon-rich gas pumped underground. However, New Zealand experts are divided on the usefulness of the geoengineering solution to cut growing emissions both in New Zealand and overseas. The CO2CRC Otway project pumped […]

The Government’s emissions trading legislation – the Clean Energy Future package – was passed the Australian Lower House of Representatives by 74 votes to 72 after weeks of debate. Although the legislation still has to be approved by the senate, the majority held by the current Government and the Green party in the senate suggest […]

An editorial in the New Zealand Herald looks at the results of a recent AgResearch study showing that food miles are not a major component in the emissions generated by New Zealand’s production of exportable lamb. Indeed, the study showed that shipping lamb from New Zealand to Britain made up a smaller proportion of lamb’s […]