Does the changing climate mean we should rethink the seasons?

Wellington weather is known for both its changeability and strong winds. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver, Alexander Robertson, Rebekah Parsons-King

Wellington's weather has come under fire, with a popular suggestion that spring in the capital is so cruddy it should be renamed, but research out of Victoria University says the data does not support the change.

Two Wellington-based researchers have analysed a popular graphic, which has taken a punt at the capital's weather, to see if it is a better way to classify the capital's seasons rather than the traditional four seasons.

Freelance IT consultant Adam Shand created the graphic about his feelings on Wellington's un-spring-like spring weather, and it had struck a nerve on X (formerly Twitter) by storm. As well as the normal seasons, Shand divided spring into spring 1 and spring 2, divided by an additional season he titled with an expletive.

"I called it S***sville in just ... a moment of snark," Shand said.

"I've joked that I probably should have called it something more like False Hope, because really what it is, is that few weeks of really nice weather at the end of August and the beginning of September and ... it's the end of winter and everybody's so ready for spring. And then you get three months of storms and rain and some really nice bits of weather, but it's just really unpredictable and stormy."

Authors Andrea Knox and Jordan Monk used five years worth of daily data, from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA) between 2017 to 2021, to look into the truth behind Wellington's springs.

While Knox said she found Shand's graph funny and agreed there was some truth to it, it was not that simple.

"What we found was that in fact the conventional seasons were better at classifying weather patterns," Knox said.

"Based on the evidence so far, it's not a better way of classifying the seasons, but it's certainly a lot of fun and he's not wrong in calling spring S***sville."

Wellington researcher Andrea Knox Photo: RNZ/ Ashleigh McCaull

However, she said with the impacts of climate change kicking in, the way seasons were classified did need to change.

"With climate change, at this point all bets are off, and we've seen this year that the weather's only getting s***tier," Knox said.

"What we've found is that not even the conventional seasons are actually very good at classifying the weather patterns. In Wellington, we know that one day you can get hail, sun, wind, rain all in the same day, so you never really know what you're going to get."

NIWA principal scientist Chris Brandolino said the windy city was expected to truly live up to its name once again this spring.

"The atmosphere may set up so that we have lower pressure to the south, higher pressure to the north and west, and those two acting like cogs will tend to squeeze the air and give us some potentially strong winds or windy periods during the middle or latter part of September," Brandolino said.

"Which is something we may see as a reoccurring theme during the rest of spring."

RNZ spoke to people on Wellington's waterfront to see what they thought about the weather.

"Spring in Wellington is amazing, it's one of my favourite seasons. It's rather windy but I think this year might be a little different," Catarina Gutierrez said.

"Absolutely crazy, you can start out in the morning and it's nice and quiet, but by lunch time, it's blowing your hair around," Nicky Molloy said.

"Really up and down like the weather's pretty bipolar," Ratu Berwick said.

"Well, it's pretty windy," Suz Cleland said.

"It gets so cold and it just gets really windy here," Shiloh Barton.

There was wide support for reclassifying the seasons.

"The seasons were defined, but now they're not. I think they're about a month out, this is weather we would have got in August or July," David said.

"Think it definitely needs to change, I think climate change is something that's not really put into our discussions a lot," Caleb Langdale-Hunt said.

"I feel like that makes sense 'cause obviously the whole world's heating up, so it's going to be hotter," Berwick said.