page_title: National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research
section_title: Environmental data
hierarchical_section_title: National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research / Environmental data
context_page_description: The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research or NIWA, is a Crown Research Institute of New Zealand. Established in 1992, NIWA conducts research across a broad range of disciplines in the environmental sciences. It also maintains nationally and, in some cases, internationally important environmental monitoring networks, databases, and collections.
  As of 2019, NIWA had 697 staff spread across 14 sites in New Zealand and one in Perth, Australia. Its head office is in Auckland, with regional offices in Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, Nelson, and Lauder. It also has small field teams, focused mostly on hydrology, stationed in Bream Bay, Lake Tekapo, Rotorua, Napier, Whanganui, Greymouth, Alexandra, and Dunedin. NIWA maintains a fleet of about 30 vessels for freshwater, marine, and atmospheric research.
context_section_description: NIWA maintains several databases containing long-term records of environmental data, and species records. The National Climate Database, for instance, contains more than 250 million individual measurements (as of August 2008), with records dating back to the 1850s. The New Zealand Freshwater Fish Database records the occurrence of fish in fresh waters of New Zealand, including major offshore islands, and details of their habitats. As of June 2009, the database included more than 28 000 records. Among other things, these databases are used to detect geographical and temporal trends in the state of the environment.
  NIWA holds the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations in the Southern Hemisphere, measured at Baring Head, near Wellington, since the 1970s. Along with equivalent measurements from the Northern Hemisphere, taken at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, these records are used to model the effects of atmospheric CO₂ on global climate.
  The information in NIWA's databases is in high demand. In the 2007-08 financial year, for instance, NIWA responded to more than 350 000 requests for data from its databases. In July 2007, NIWA allowed free online access to archived data on climate, lake levels, river flow, sea levels, water quality, and freshwater fish.
caption: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Record from Baring Head, Wellington from 1977 to 2007. Source: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.