Our climate change work

The EHINZ team monitors the impact of environmental health, climate change, and social vulnerability on human health in New Zealand.  On this page, you can explore our work relating to climate change and health, covering indicators, data explorers, and publications. 

Indicators relevant to climate change

Our climate change domain monitors key aspects of climate change and health, using a suite of environmental health indicators (Table 1).

Climate change will also indirectly affect human health, through air quality, water quality, UV levels, and vector-borne disease. We monitor many of these topics through our wider suite of environmental health indicators.  

Extreme Climate Index

The Extreme Climate Index (ECI) presents composite measures of extreme climate events and climate variability for Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Professor Heather McLeod worked with Professor James Renwick (Victoria University of Wellington) to create the Extreme Climate Index (ECI) for Aotearoa New Zealand [1]. EHINZ collaborates with Heather McLeod, to create interactive data visualisations about the Extreme Climate Index.

Climate change and extreme weather may greatly impact people’s health and wellbeing through extreme weather events such as floods, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. The ECI aims to make the “signal” of extreme events visible against the “noise” of daily weather. 

We have published climate summary reports by territorial authority. These reports show ten Extreme Climate Index composite measures of extreme climate events and climate variability, with data from 1972 to 2022. 

Data visualisations relating to climate change

You can explore our climate change data and information with the following data visualisations:

• Dashboard of EHINZ indicators of climate change and environmental health, by health districts and territorial authority
• Social vulnerability indicators for 2018 by SA2, territorial authority, and health district, including an interactive map, and downloadable heatmaps by geographic region
• Extreme Climate Index – summary reports by territorial authority, showing ten Extreme Climate Index layers from 1972 to 2022

For more information, see the Data visualisations webpage.

Reports and publications

We have published several reports and publications relating to climate change.

Reports

 Social vulnerability to the impacts of climate-related hazards in Aotearoa New Zealand (pdf, 9.54 MB) (Aug 2024) and  Appendix: Heatmap by territorial authority level (pdf, 397 KB) (Aug 2024)

This report, commissioned by the Climate Change Commission, presents national results for individual social vulnerability indicators for New Zealand. The report includes changes over time, maps by territorial authority, and differences by key population groups where possible. The social vulnerability indicators mostly draw on 2013 and 2018 Census data.

 Heatwaves and Mortality: A pilot study for the Canterbury district (September 2023) (pdf, 1.2MB) 

This report investigates three different heatwave definitions, and estimates the impact of heatwaves on mortality in the pilot study area of Canterbury district (formerly Canterbury District Health Board, CDHB). This pilot study covers the study period of November-March 2000 to 2018.

Journal articles

Mason K, Lindberg K, Haenfling C, Schori A, Marsters H, Read D, Borman B. 2021. Social vulnerability indicators for flooding in Aotearoa New Zealand. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(8):3952. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18083952.