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NIWA Water Resources Archive and
Climate Database - An Overview
David Wratt & Charles Pearson
What are they?
• Climate network & database
• Hydrometric network & database
• River water quality network and
database
• National coverage, coordinated
operations, communications
• NIWA backbone + contributions by
many others
• Discrete databases (Oracle,
Tideda, Excel / Access)
• Developing common web front end
• FRST $3.5M (Global processes,
sustainability)
Climate Network & Database
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208 open climate stations (118
automatic). Includes soil
moisture network, 45 reference
climate stations
654 open rainfall stations
5 open upper air stations
Many closed climate & rain
stations
Climate observations from
various Pacific islands
Oldest records back to 1870s
Many stations voluntary or
collaborative, + MetS archive
Hydrometric network & database
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River and lake water levels (15
mins); River flows (~monthly);
Sediment concentrations; Rainfall
(6 mins); Soil moisture levels
14 NIWA field offices
NIWA: 230 open water level
stations
Partnership funding of $1.5m pa
from hydropower companies
Regional and district council data
• ~250 open water level stations
Overall, >1200 NZ water level
records (open and closed stations)
Water Quality Network & Database
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Initiated 1989: 77 river sites
• Monthly sampling
• >14 water quality
variables plus flow
• Also macrophyteperiphytonmacroinvertebrate
measurements at 66
sites in summer
• Baseline (32) and impact
(45) sites
What is it used for (Climate examples) ?
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Climate monitoring*, research
Other research (agriculture,
ecosystems, ...)
• NIWA updates and outlooks
• Resource assessments
• Engineering (wind energy, air
quality, building design, air
conditioning, drainage design, ...)
• Hazard assessment
• Legal
• School projects
* Some required by international
agreement, e.g. WMO, UNFCCC
Who uses it (climate examples) ?
• National Climate Centre Staff
• Researchers (outside + NIWA)
• Engineers, agricultural sector,
local government, police,
lawyers, ...
• sql: 50 NIWA users, 50 outside
• 1290 non-internet requests
01/02
• 700 educational queries 01/02
(<00/01 because of web
educational data tables)
Challenges & Developments
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FUNDING: Static since 1994 (ie
decreasing real$ support from FRST),
NIWA subsidy
Demand for more detail (space, time)
Increasing near real-time 24/7
demand
Paper archives of old non-electronic
data
Requests from schools etc (unfunded)
Move to user-friendly web access
Value added services (ClimateNow,
gridded data sets, climate surfaces,
collaborative land-use studies, …)