The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research or NIWA, is a Crown Research Institute of New Zealand. Established in 1992, NIWA conducts commercial and non-commercial 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. It also has small field teams, focused mostly on hydrology. NIWA maintains a fleet of about 30 vessels for freshwater, marine, and atmospheric research. NIWA focuses on atmospheric, marine, and freshwater research – extending from the deep ocean to the upper atmosphere – in New Zealand, the Pacific, Southern Ocean, and Antarctica.
NIWA’s research spans diverse fields:
• aquaculture
• aquatic biodiversity
• aquatic biosecurity
• atmospheric science
• climate change
• coastal ecology
• energy
• fisheries
• hydrology
• marine geology
• natural hazards (e.g. tsunami, storm surge, floods, earthquake, volcano)
• oceanography
• sedimentology
Research projects are undertaken in collaboration with local and central government agencies, other Crown Research Institutes, industry, private research companies, and universities in New Zealand and the rest of the world. Most of NIWA’s revenue is from contestable research funding and commercial consultancy work.