New Zealand has recorded its warmest ever winter on record, with temperatures 1.14C above average.
The top temperatures also mean seven of our warmest winters have occurred since the year 2000, and NIWA says it's largely due to climate change.
Although there's been snow and flooding this winter, the new record-high temperatures beat out 2013's, which was the previous record-holder, NIWA meteorologist Ben Noll said.
The South Island recorded the lowest temperature of the season at -12.3C in Middlemarch, but it also had the warmest, with Timaru recording 25.1C in late August.
"[This] was not just Timaru's warmest winter temperature on record, but New Zealand's equal fourth," Noll said.
Kaikohe had it's second wettest winter on record with 935 millimetres of rain.
Noll said this year's record-breaking result was a combination of high pressure, warmer than average ocean temperatures, northeasterly winds and climate change.
"The baseline for temperatures here in New Zealand is increasing, and one of the main reasons behind that is climate change," he said.
News New Zealand's record-breaking winter comes as protestors in the UK seek climate-change action, with 100 'climate corpses' complete with death certificates used to warn politicians what the future will hold if they don't act now.
Doctors took part, including Kiwi Rebecca Redwood.
"Climate change and the destruction it will bring is preventable, and it will cause so much disease and death in so many ways," she said.
Protestors spilled onto the streets and some super-glued their hands to the pavement, while others were carried away by police.
Their actions perhaps not as extreme as the major global changes experts like Noll are preparing for.
"A winter that we experienced here in 2020, the temperatures that we experienced, by the time that we get to 2040, 2050, that might become the new normal," he said.
NIWA is also tipping New Zealand's spring to be warmer-than-average too.
