Last year was New Zealand’s hottest year on record, according to the country’s National Institute of Water and Aeronautic Research (NIWA).
According to NIWA, New Zealand’s average temperature in 2021 was 13.56 degrees Celsius.
This is the highest average NIWA has recorded since it began taking records in 1909. It also breaks the previous record set in 2016 by 0.11 degrees.
The latest news has been part of an ongoing trend with seven of the past nine years being among New Zealand’s warmest ever.
Experts believe that these increases will only increase.
Dr James Renwick, from the Victoria University of Wellington said: “We can expect more and more of the same in future – the record high temperatures we have just experienced would be counted as a cold year by the 2040s.”
