Trends in number of days with a maximum gust in the 99th percentile, 1972–2016
Publisher
New Zealand's Environment Reporting Series: The Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand
Description
Trends in number of days with a maximum gust in the 99th percentile, 1972–2016. Steady wind can be an important resource, but strong gusts can damage property, topple trees, and disrupt transportation, communications, and electricity. Extreme wind events can occur with frontal weather systems, around strong convective storms such as thunderstorms, and with ex–tropical cyclones. Projections indicate climate change may alter the occurrence of extreme wind events, with the strength of extreme winds expected to increase over the southern half of the North Island and the South Island, especially east of the Southern Alps, and decrease from Northland to Bay of Plenty. Monitoring can help us gauge the potential of, and prepare for, such events. Trend direction was assessed using the Theil-Sen estimator and the Two One-Sided Test (TOST) for equivalence at the 95% confidence level. More information on this dataset and how it relates to our environmental reporting indicators and topics can be found in the attached data quality pdf.
