Lincoln's Climate Station

Lincoln University’s climate station has a long history, holding one of the longest weather records in New Zealand. Records were taken throughout the year and reports supplied to the Meteorological Department. Monthly reviews of weather conditions and their influence on farming were distributed to the local press and various Government Departments. Its purpose was essentially to provide information on weather patterns and observations to help determine how to best respond when raising crops and livestock for high-quality, sustainable food production. Today, these national stations provide data for the analysis of long-term climate trends in New Zealand and the South Pacific.

This unique climate dataset preserved in the Lincoln University archives covers weather recordings from 1890 to 1971.

The weather station project was initiated by then college manager William Ivey, who envisioned the use of the climate data around Lincoln as a proxy for the Canterbury plains. Observations fell on the responsibility of college staff members (or their children), who went out of their way to record the conditions of the time. Students were excluded from this, since Ivey felt that he ‘would not even trust the students to feed the horses’ (Blair 1978, p.341).

The weather station was erected in January 1881, its instruments having been moved from their former place in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens. It was set up about 200m south of the main college buildings, in an exposed area near a stock paddock. William Ivey’s vision for the station was that collecting this data about the climatic history of the Lincoln area would shed light onto the Canterbury plains, and beneficial to the agricultural education of the students of Lincoln College. The college understood the importance of climatic effects on agricultural production; its first course on its inception in 1879 included basic meteorology. First-year students had one-hour a week taught by Mr Buckley on topics such as dew, wind, mist and cloud, meteorological instruments, observation methods, laws  of storms, and the influences of mountains and oceans. As the College’s courses expanded, meteorology as a subject diminished and became incorporated into Natural Science and other subjects.  By the 1970s, the subject was taught in courses of physics, agricultural engineering, and parks and recreation.  

Read Cyril Blakeney's Meteorology lecture notes, 1908-1909

One of the many responsibilities expected of staff was to advance students’ understanding through research, and they all recognised that any outdoor research inevitably included weather in some way. The original instrumentation included a rain gauge, wind gauge, barometer, barograph, grass minimum thermometer, solar radiation thermometer and maximum, minimum, and ordinary dry- and wet-bulb thermometers. Throughout its life it was continuously upgraded with new technology, including a sunshine recorder in 1900 and then a Campbell Stokes recorder in 1915. The college’s first Earth thermometer wires were installed in 1913, to the depths of 1, 9, and 18 feet. In the mid-1970s a 20m guyed mast was installed that supported detectors of average wind speed, temperature, and humidity profiles at 20m above ground level, along with a solar radiation sensors designed to measure the balance of solar radiation over pasture.

Despite the Lincoln University weather station having the longest running datasets nationally on climatic data, the fine print reveals there are a number of gaps in data since 1881. Upon its inception the Lincoln College weather station was staffed solely by volunteers, which was not unlike the situation with weather stations throughout the country, where a third of the nation’s observers were unpaid (Blair 1978, p.342). When academic staff could not tend to the weather station it was not uncommon for their older children to do it, or days to be missed completely, such as what occurred the first days of 1933. In response to this gap in data, the director of the New Zealand Meteorological Service, Dr. Edward Kidson, stated his disappointment with the college for the loss of data, the increase of work this created for the Meteorological Service, and was heavily disappointed by the lack of importance for the project. R.E. Alexander, the college director at the time, was quick to retort that the reason for the gap was that a staff member had been sick, and despite not being paid for the observations that they had done, the staff work was comparable to the work of paid observers. According to R.E. Alexander, the Lincoln College observers were still ‘amongst our best’ despite the challenge of organising the unpaid work year round (Blair 1978, p.342). There were other gaps in data, notably in 1943, when regular observers were not present due to service in the Second World War and the pressures of the harvest overwhelmed the staff’s ability to record.

Inconsistency in data quality and recording is to be noted, as well. With the consistent turnover in observers, breakages of instruments, upgrading of reporting technology, and environmental changes out of the college’s control there was no way to guarantee standardisation of collection or attribute trends in data to conditions or inconsistencies in reporting and recording. The grass minimum thermometers and Earth thermometers were considered “troublesome” and had to be replaced often due to frequent breakages. The development of the region continued, including the installation of a shelter belt against the boundary of the station enclosure. Because of the effect this would have on reporting, the station was moved in 1943, 1963, and 1975. During many of these moves, the opportunity was taken to upgrade instrumentation, which no doubt would affect the quality of data. The facilities had the ability to “monitor energy transferred by radiation, the movement of heat, momentum and moisture through the surface layer, the performance of wind turbines and spray irrigation systems, and it has been used to relate more closely than ever before [in the 1970s], the influence of weather and its variables to crop and pasture growth.” (Blair 1978, p.343), and many staff applied weather variables findings to their research.

In 1974, the college, recognising the need for this research and significant resource to continue, appointed a lecturer in agricultural meteorology, Neil J. Cherry, who would be responsible for the climate station and keeping its records as well as to develop courses and research in the subject.

The station on college land closed in 1987 and was replaced by the Lincoln Broadfield station at the Crop Research Division, DSIR, on Boundary Road. Data is now harvested by NIWA.

Since the late 1990s, Lincoln University has collected weather data from Mt Grand Station near Lake Hāwea. Researchers from Lincoln University continue to lead and be involved in data analysis projects using climate stations around New Zealand.

Written by Noelani Velasquez with additions and edits by Isabella Kerby, 2025

Adapted and expanded on N. J. Cherry’s “Basic Meteorology at Lincoln College”, Appendix 9 of Ian Blair’s The Seed They Sowed, 1976, pp 341-344

Also see:

Mullan, A.B; Stuart, S.J; Hadfield, M.G; Smith, M.J (2010). Report on the Review of NIWA’s ‘Seven-Station’ Temperature Series. NIWA Information Series No. 78. pp.129-154. https://livingheritage.lincoln.ac.nz/nodes/view/32166

Fouhy, E., Coutts, L., McGann, R., Collen, B., Salinger, M.J., 1992: South Pacific Historical Climate Network Climate Station Histories. Part 2, New Zealand and Offshore Islands. NZ Meteorological Service, Wellington. ISBN 0-477-01583-2.