Brian Anderson – The Conversation

Brewster Glacier is thinning and retreating because of extremely low retention of winter snow and high summer melt rates. Lauren Vargo/Victoria University of Wellington

March 9, 2025

NZ’s glaciers have already lost nearly a third of their ice – as more vanishes, landscapes and lives change

Shaun Eaves, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Andrew Lorrey, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA); Brian Anderson, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Heather Purdie, University of Canterbury, and Lauren Vargo, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Snow and ice loss warms the land surface and air, setting off a feedback loop of further ice loss. This destabilises the landscape, with potentially hazardous impacts.

Small aircraft carry scientists high above the Southern Alps to survey glacier changes. Hamish McCormick/NIWA

June 7, 2018

A bird’s eye view of New Zealand’s changing glaciers

Andrew Lorrey, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA); Andrew Mackintosh, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington, and Brian Anderson, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Forty years of continuous end-of-summer snowline monitoring of New Zealand’s glaciers brings the issue of human-induced climate change into tight focus.

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