TL;DR : Here’s the top six items of climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer, most of which they discussin the video above. * According to experts, the rate of ocean surface warming around New Zealand is “outstripping the global average threefold in some areas and twice on average”. They warn that the severity of storms like Cyclone Gabrielle and the ones that recently hit the East Coast are expected to grow even higher in the future as a result. * At the same time, a new briefing from Public Health Communication Centre Aotearoa (PHCCA) claims the Government’s policy response is incoherent, saying that ‘clean-ups are not enough’!  Further,  “It is evident that the current Government is failing to make the connection between their climate change policies and increasing negative impacts on communities and the country.” * Their call for ‘policy coherency’ is echoed by carbon market expert Christina Hood, who suggested recently that key ministers appear to be operating under the misapprehension that emissions growth caused by their policies will be automatically offset by the ETS. * That same policy incoherency is replicated again in the government’s new ‘Five-point’ climate strategy as experts point to inconsistencies in the policy approach. * As if to put a pin in the risks to human wellbeing, ‘crazy’ ocean temperatures super-charged the earliest ever recorded category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. Hurricane Beryl slammed into Texas this week, turning out lights for two million households, after killing 11 people during its early season rampage across the Caribbean. * Canadian oil companies, lobby groups and third-party advertisers are scrambling to scrub their websites clean of carbon capture claims likely to fall afoul of new greenwashing rules. (See more detail and analysis below. Cathrine Dyer’s journalism on climate and the environment is available free to all paying and non-paying subscribers to The Kākā and the public. It is made possible by subscribers signing up to the paid tier to ensure this sort of public interest journalism is fully available in public to read, listen to and share. Cathrine wrote the wrap. Bernard edited it. Lynn copy-edited and illustrated it.) 1. NZ waters warming more than global average New data sets released by Stats NZ this week show sea surface temperatures around the country in 2022 and 2023 were the hottest ever recorded. Areas to the west of the North Island were bathed in heatwave conditions for nearly 90% of the year. Dr Matt Pinkerton, Principal Scientist – Marine Ecology & Remote Sensing at NIWA points out just how dramatic and localised the increase has been: "Things are getting hotter because of climate change – we knew that already – but the accelerating pace of warming of the oceans around New Zealand is surprising. The rate of ocean surface warming round New Zealand is now outstripping the global average threefold in some areas and twice on average. This disrupts the narrative that New Zealand is well placed to avoid the worst that climate change will bring. More warming brings more marine heatwaves and the increase in these abnormally hot events since 2010 is dramatic.” Acceleration in the rate of ocean warming has consequences that extend beyond the marine environment itself, with the ocean being a dominant factor in the weather experienced in Aotearoa. Dr. Georgia Grant, climate scientist at GNS Science warns of increasing storm intensity. “It’s important for New Zealanders to be aware that, even if global warming is kept to 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures in line with the Paris target (which the world is not on track to meet), we should expect higher ocean temperatures here. As an island nation, the ocean dictates much of our weather, and increasing ocean temperatures are one of the factors as to why storms like Cyclone Gabrielle