Last month was New Zealand’s fourth-warmest July on record, according to Niwa data, as the world as a whole went through what was expected to have been the hottest month on record.
New daily high temperature records were set at six climate stations around New Zealand. They were all south of Cook Strait – at Greymouth, Blenheim Brothers Island, Middlemarch, Waipounamu and Cromwell.
Musselburgh in Dunedin and Waipounamu recorded their highest mean July temperatures, while Taupō was among places with their mean 2nd-warmest July months. Whenuapai in Auckland and Ruakura in Hamilton recorded their 3rd-highest July mean temperatures.
Taupō and Paraparaumu were among places with their 2nd-highest mean maximum July temperatures.
John Kirk-Anderson/Stuff
Dunedin had its warmest July mean temperature on record last month.
Overall, the nationwide average temperature in July 2023 was 9.1C, Niwa said. That was 1.1C above the 1991-2020 July average based on Niwa’s seven station temperature series that started in 1909.
For the whole world, the first three weeks of July was the warmest three-week period on record, the World Meteorological Organisation said. “Short of a mini-Ice Age” to end July, it would be the hottest month on record.
July was also a particularly wet month for eastern Canterbury and Southland, while being relatively dry across most of the rest of the country, Niwa said.
Niwa
Rainfall and temperature in July, compared to average.
Akaroa had its 3rd-wettest July on record with 400mm of rain – more than three times average. Of that total, 199mm fell on one day.
On the same day – July 22 – Christchurch also set a one-day July rainfall record with 86mm, in records going back to 1873.
