Download Scenarios of Regional Drought under Climate Change

Rainfall deficits are a common feature of New Zealand’s climatic environment and it is not unusual to experience short duration dry spells as isolated regional level events.
Geographically widespread rainfall deficits with durations over one to two months are less frequent, and are usually considered to be ‘agricultural droughts’ as modern pastoral and crop production systems are vulnerable to rainfall deficits of this scale and duration. Recently the widespread rainfall deficit spanning late 2007 to the end of autumn 2008 was estimated to cost the New Zealand economy around $2.8 billion (MAF 2009), mainly from negative on-farm impacts but also from smaller but detectable negative impacts on regional economies.