Come and meet your fellow weather nerds and climate scientists working and studying in Auckland.

We'll have a few short talks by Metsoc members about their work and there will be plenty of time to chat with your Auckland peers.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Talks will be provided by:

- Luke Sutherland-Stacey (Weather Radar NZ)

- Ben Noll (NIWA)

- Drew Lorrey (NIWA)

Luke Sutherland-Stacey is the Director of Weather Radar New Zealand Limited, a small company employing 4 full time PhD qualified scientists specialising in rainfall remote sensing for end user applications. WRNZ are involved in a variety of local and international rainfall observation campaigns including leading a recently funded Endeavour Smart Ideas project. In his talk, Luke will summarise some current work programmes in Auckland and Bangkok, using radar systems to provide enhanced Quantitative Precipitation Estimation products to local government stakeholders.

Ben Noll hails from New York. After working at the well known AccuWeather.com in the U.S., he jumped on the opportunity to work for NIWA in late 2015. Since then, Ben has done operational forecasting at NIWA and regularly appears in traditional media when hazardous weather approaches the country. Ben leads NIWA’s Seasonal Climate Outlook project. He enjoys the extra challenges that seasonal climate forecasting brings and, along with other scientists at NIWA, is currently exploring increased predictability with machine learning techniques.

Talk: On New Zealand’s climate in late 2020

A trend toward La Niña is having an influence on our climate patterns in New Zealand. What might it mean for the rest of the year? The last time we had a La Niña event (2017-18), it came with a freak marine heatwave and 3 ex-tropical cyclones near our coastlines. This talk will include the presentation of fresh model guidance for the upcoming seasons.

Drew Lorrey comes from just north of Boston and has lived in NZ since 2002. He uses a diverse background in climate science, environmental science and geology to improve understanding of the global climate system. He leads the NIWA Southern Hemisphere Climates and Environments Programme and the Climate Present and Past project - which includes the end-of-summer snowline (EOSS) mission that monitors our glaciers. Drew’s current research is focused on examining evidence from natural archives, historic data and models to establish how Southern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation works.

Talk: Glaciers: a time capsule

This presentation will show a video about structure from motion photogrammetry applied to the NIWA EOSS archive. We assembled this video prior to and during lockdown, and used it to help demonstrate the importance of maintaining long-term observations. Our most recent work using EOSS-derived data has shown anthropogenic emissions are influencing extreme summer temperatures that melt NZ glaciers.