Auckland flooding

New Zealand's biggest airport delayed the reopening of its international terminal Saturday because “critical components” of the infrastructure were damaged ...

local time Sunday and arrivals will be delayed until 7 a.m. While local services have resumed, no international departures are likely to take place before 5 a.m. New Zealand’s biggest airport delayed the reopening of its international terminal Saturday because “critical components” of the infrastructure were damaged by severe flooding after a

The nation's weather forecaster said while heavy rain had eased, another period of downpours was possible on Sunday. Two men were found dead amid the flooding, ...

A search was under way for another man believed swept away. "We're not out of this yet. Another person was unaccounted for after a landslide hit a house in an inner suburb of Auckland, police said. Register for free to Reuters and know the full story "Auckland was clobbered on Friday – Auckland's wettest day on record – and today we start the clean-up," the agency's duty controller Andrew Clark said in a statement, urging caution for residents returning home to survey flood damage. A state of emergency remained in place in the city of around 1.6 million people on New Zealand's north island as the rains eased after causing flooding in the north, northwest and west.

Emergency services facing huge number of callouts as wild weather sparks landslides and forces closure of country's largest airport.

Police said they were “continuing to respond to a high number of calls to weather-related incidents”. The flooding also swept a man away in a community south of Auckland, and another person is unaccounted for after a landslide brought down a house in the city centre. The bodies of two men were found in flood waters in separate incidents in a northern suburb, police said.

The more the climate warms, the heavier the storm rainfalls will become. The Auckland emergency shows how urgently adaptive measures are now needed.

These are the responses we need to be thinking about and taking action on now. The country’s stormwater drain system was designed for the climate we used to have – 50 or more years ago. The globe and New Zealand have experienced a bit over a degree of warming in the past century, and we have measured the increasing water vapour content. But, as the climate continues to warm, the amount of water vapour in the air increases. Air is sucked in at ground level, lofted up and cooled quickly, losing much of its moisture in the process. How much climate change contributed to the rainfall total will be part of those calculations. So all that moister air is brought together, then “wrung out” to deliver the rain. Given what we have already seen, how do we adapt? These delivered the heaviest rain falls, with MetService figures showing Auckland Airport received its average monthly rain for January in less than hour. [NIWA](https://environment.govt.nz/publications/climate-change-projections-for-new-zealand/)) [estimates](https://environment.govt.nz/publications/climate-change-projections-for-new-zealand/) that over Auckland, one degree of warming translates to abount a 20% increase in the one-hour rainfall, for a one-in-50-year event. Damage to houses, cars, roads and infrastructure will run into many millions of dollars. But usually they’re from North America or Asia, or maybe Europe.