Following up on my post about the country and its people a few weeks back, this entry focuses on Christchurch’s weather and climate.

If you projected New Zealand onto the Northern Hemisphere, Christchurch would sit at almost the exact same latitude as Florence—right in the heart of Tuscany.

Despite being at the same latitude as Florence, the solar radiation in Christchurch is significantly stronger, something you can feel directly on your skin every single day.

In summer, UV radiation in Christchurch is about 40% more intense than in Florence. Around 10% of this is caused by lower ozone concentration, and 7% is due to the Earth’s elliptical orbit, as the distance between the Earth and the Sun is shorter during the New Zealand summer than during the European summer.

The lion’s share of about 20 to 25%, however—and this is no joke—is due to a lack of air pollution!

In other details as well, New Zealand and Italy are quite similar, as this table clearly shows. While Italy is slightly larger in terms of land area, New Zealand is significantly longer in its maximum extent.

Country	Maximum extenc (km)	Latitude coverage	Land area (km²)
Italy	approx. 1.200 km	35° N … 47° N	294.140 km²
New Zealand	approx. 1.600 km	34° S … 47° S	264.537 km²

If you placed New Zealand in the Northern Hemisphere, it would look something like this next to Italy.

Spot the difference? New Zealand is a boot, too—just like Italy!

Even so, due to New Zealand’s island location and the resulting sea breeze, summers in Christchurch are comparatively mild and pleasant with temperatures around 25°C. You can count the number of summer days above 30°C on one hand.

April and May, which mark the late summer and early autumn, bring pleasant daytime temperatures of around 20°C, cooling down to 10–12°C at night. On rainy days, however, it doesn’t get particularly warm during the day, with the thermometer usually getting stuck at a chilly 15°C. The weather changes relatively quickly; unlike in Germany, bad weather here usually lasts for just a single day before the sun shines again. That said, there are also days when it pours in the morning, offers bright sunshine by noon, and hails in the evening—or vice versa. And as for the wind, that’s a year-round constant anyway.

If we compare our previous hometown Regensburg in Germany with Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island, there is a clear winner when it comes to sunshine: Christchurch is significantly sunnier.

While Regensburg gets around 1,700 hours of sunshine per year, Christchurch averages over 2,300 hours of sunshine over the long term. That’s more than 6 extra weeks of sunshine every year!

Two things make all the difference between the two cities.

Since Christchurch is in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are completely flipped. When Regensburg is sinking into a grey winter in January, peak summer is booming in New Zealand.

The biggest contrast isn’t actually during the summer (where both cities are quite similar with 7 to 8 hours of sunshine daily), but in the winter. While Regensburg is often trapped under a stubborn blanket of fog or cloud from November to January, barely scraping 1.5 hours of sunshine a day, Christchurch rarely drops below 3.5 to 4 hours of daily sunshine, even during the New Zealand winter (June/July). Due to its proximity to the Pacific, the weather here is often windier, which blows the clouds away much faster.

The previously mentioned Florence has around 2,400 hours of sunshine per year. Christchurch is therefore nearly on par with Florence in terms of sunshine.

For us, the question ‘Italy or rather New Zealand?’ doesn’t even arise, as we are essentially on the second Italian boot. Unfortunately, Michelangelo didn’t leave any traces here—but Tolkien certainly did.

That’s enough dry facts from me; the next post is guaranteed to be from Vroni again. She’s been very busy with the job hunt lately, which is currently looking quite promising. Hopefully, there will be more on that soon in her next post—stay tuned.