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Kia ora T Dobbie,

Thank you for your email. We acknowledge receipt of your OIA request below.

We will respond as soon as possible and no later than 13 February 2024, being 20 working days after the day your request was received. If we are unable to respond to your request by then, we will notify you of an extension of that timeframe.

Ngā mihi,
Melissa

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Kia ora T Dobbie,

Thank you for your OIA request. We respond as follows.

1. Please advise the dates the Christchurch Weather Stations changed from manual measuring equipment to the electronic form for each of the types of measuring equipment. The sunshine recorder, thermometers, rain gauge and all other equipment.

The Christchurch Botanic Gardens weather station was upgraded to an Electronic Weather Station (EWS) called Christchurch Botanic Gardens EWS on 02 June 2021. The EWS measures and records Air Temperature, Relative Humidity, Barometric pressure, Rainfall, Grass Minimum, Soil Temperatures at 10cm, 20cm, 50cm and 100cm together with Soil Moisture at depths from 10-80cm at 10cm intervals. The exposure was never favourable for wind, sunshine or solar radiation so no measurements of such are being recorded electronically. I cannot see records of manual observations for those parameters either.

2. Please advise if there is any equipment still utilising the old manual systems for measurement.

The manual instruments are still part of the stations history. There was an overlap period for a year or so soon after the upgrade but observations are not being made for official records since then.

Please note, under section 28(3) of the Act, you have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision.

Ngā mihi
Melissa

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Kia ora

I am on annual leave and back in the office 8 April 2024.

Ngā mihi

Melissa

Melissa Bray
Communications Lead - Technology & Innovation and Internal Comms
+64-9-375-7135
[1][IMG]
National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA)
41 Market Place, Viaduct Harbour Auckland New Zealand
Connect with NIWA: [2]niwa.co.nz [3]Facebook [4]LinkedIn
[5]Twitter [6]Instagram [7]YouTube

To ensure compliance with legal requirements and to maintain cyber
security standards, NIWA's IT systems are subject to ongoing monitoring,
activity logging and auditing. This monitoring and auditing service may be
provided by third parties. Such third parties can access information
transmitted to, processed by and stored on NIWA's IT systems.
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contain information that is confidential or subject to legal professional
privilege. If you receive this email in error please immediately notify
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Kia ora T Dobbie
Thanks for your email.

Just correcting some information that you have received.

Radiation - never recorded at this station
Wind - last observation done in 1884
Sunshine - last observation done in 1953

Christchurch Botanic Gardens station started in 1863 and it is still operational until now.

We have an automated station at the same place called the Christchurch Botanic Gardens EWS which started operating in 2021.
NIWA has not closed the manual station - both, manual and automated stations are still operational.

Currently the Manual station records the following parameters:
- rainfall
- dry bulb temperature
- wet bulb temperature
- maximum temperature
- minimum temperature
- grass minimum temperature
- 10, 20, 30 and 100cm earth temperatures
- evaporation

The automated station measures:

- rainfall
- dry bulb temperature
- wet bulb temperature
- maximum temperature
- minimum temperature
- grass minimum temperature
- 10, 20, and 100cm earth temperatures
- air pressure

Most stations in NZ were started as a temperature or rainfall station. Other parameters were not generally measured. Another reason I can think of (for not including these 3 parameters) is that the location of the climate station in the Botanical Garden is in a place where there are exposure issues for sunshine, radiation, and wind - the place is surrounded by trees and the readings will not give a true picture of the weather of Christchurch. This is my assumption as I cannot find any notes on why the people before us decided not to include these three instruments at the station.

Hope this answers your question.

Many thanks
Seema

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