AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR

Transcription

1 AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR Great Basin Climate Forum Desert Research Institute Reno, Nevada December 6, 2018 David B. Simeral U.S. Drought Monitor Author Associate Research Scientist - Climatology Western Regional Climate Center & Desert Research Institute

2 Presentation Outline General overview of the USDM (who, what, where, when) Nuts and bolts of the collaborative process, data, methods, and analysis

3 What is the USDM? Weekly composite drought map which conveys current information on the spatial extent & intensity of drought Jointly produced by National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Part of a drought early warning system (NOAA NIDIS)

4 Evolution of the USDM THE VERY FIRST U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR! THE MAP WAS CREATED IN CORELDRAW (BASIC DRAWING SOFTWARE) AUTHORS SWITCH FROM CORELDRAW TO GIS (GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM) TO CREATE THE MAP MY FIRST SHIFT. INITIATION BY FIRE CURRENT MAP CONFIGURATION

5 Drought Monitor Expansion U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) and U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI) including: Republic of Palau, Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, & Republic of the Marshall Islands Expected to go operational in early 2019 Adding a second weekly author to cover Puerto Rico, USAPI, & USVI USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center hosted drought workshops in San Juan, PR & Honolulu, HI to discuss what drought looks like in these regions and related topics - data availability, drought impacts to agriculture, ecosystems, and water supply sectors

6 Who creates the weekly map? 12 national authors Authors work at regional or national centers, government or academia/research Authors work rotating shifts - typically two or three 2-week shifts annually A weekly Page 2 author will be added in 2019 to cover analysis of Puerto Rico, USVI, & USAPI

7 Our Contributors Backbone of the USDM Provide ground-truth 400+ contributors Configuration varies State coordination teams (For example, AZ, NM, MT) Regional or basin teams (CA-NV Upper Colorado River Basin)

8 USDM-NADM Forums Lincoln, NE 2000 Asheville, NC 2002 NADM Ashville, NC 2003 Cedar City, UT 2003 NADM Regina, SK 2004 Washington D.C NADM Mexico City, MEX 2006 Portland, OR 2007 NADM Ottawa, ON 2008 Austin, TX 2009 NADM Asheville, NC 2010 Washington D.C NADM Cancun, MEX 2012 West Palm Beach, FL 2013 NADM Toronto, ON 2014 Reno, NV 2015 NADM Fort Worth, TX 2016 Keystone, SD 2017 NDMC Calgary, AB 2018 Bowling Green, KY Spring 2019

9 The Drought Monitor Concept A consolidation of indices and indicators into one comprehensive national drought map Try to capture these characteristics: drought magnitude (duration + intensity) spatial extent probability of occurrence impacts

10 Overall Objectives/Approach USDM is not a model, forecast, or drought declaration An assessment of current conditions Applies a Fujita-like scale to drought Identify drought impacts (short-term and long-term) Incorporate local expert input Be as objective as possible (percentiles) Convergence of evidence approach

11 Drought Severity Classification Drought intensity based upon: Key indicators (PDSI, soil moisture, streamflow, SPI, Objective Drought Indicator Blends) and dozens of additional parameters Drought impacts Local reports Drought categories are associated with historical occurrence/likelihood (percentile ranking). It s not anecdotal or subjective, like it s really, really dry or I don t ever remember is being this dry we have to be D4.

12 State-Specific Drought Impacts Classification Table For questions or comments contact Mary Noel at

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14 Who uses the USDM? USDA - drought disaster declarations FSA Livestock Forage Disaster Program IRS tax deferrals on forced livestock sales due to drought NWS Drought Information Statements State, local, tribal, and basin-level decision makers trigger drought responses Media & general public

15 2014 Farm Bill Livestock Forage Disaster Program payouts (financial assistance to producers who suffered grazing losses due to drought or fire on or after October 1, 2011, during the calendar year in which the loss occurred): 2011 Calendar Year: $ 286,776, Calendar Year: $ 2,621,500, Calendar Year: $ 1,651,745, Calendar Year: $ 925,559, Calendar Year: $ 536,347, Calendar Year: $ 287,976, Calendar Year: $ 358,830, Calendar Year: $ 160,751,027 LFDP Total, : $ 6,829,486,921 (Updated through 8/29/2018) Nevada 2012: $14,096, : $15,707, : $15,702, : $12,694, : $ 6,998, : $ 176,895 Data credit: USDA-OCE

16 NOAA NIDIS DEWS Utilizes new and existing federal, tribal, state, local, and academic partners to make climate & drought information accessible and useful to decision makers Focus on improving the capacity of stakeholders to monitor, forecast, plan for, and cope with the impacts of drought CA-NV DEWS hosts bi-monthly drought & climate outlook webinars and stakeholder calls/meetings. Website: Recent activities in the Great Basin working on improving inter-agency and stakeholder participation and development of the Utah Drought Monitoring Working Group NIDIS hosted drought coordination workshops in collaboration with the Utah Department of Water Resources and USDA Southwest Climate Hub

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18 Most droughts do not have all the indicators in agreement Look at where most of the indicators are pointing Reported impacts help to paint a clearer picture

19 Convergence of Evidence Indices: SPI/PDSI Precipitation Snowpack Soil Moisture Expert Local Input Streamflow Reservoirs Remote Sensing

20 Meteorological & Climate Data NWS Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS), NWS WPC forecast discussions, NWS QPF forecasts, Westwide Drought Tracker, NOAA NCEI Temperature & Precipitation Products, ACIS Climate Maps, Climate Engine, NRCS SNOTEL, California Snow Surveys, NWS National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center, CoCoRaHS, RAWS, local mesonets (i.e., OK Mesonet, NICE Net) Hydrological USGS Water Watch, USGS Groundwater Watch, NRCS & USBR reservoir levels, NASA GRACE Shallow Groundwater Soil moisture NOAA NLDAS, NASA GRACE, NASA SMAP, NOAA CPC, NOAA Crop Moisture Index, NASA GRACE Surface & Root-Zone Soil Moisture, NOAA CRN, NRCS SCAN, local mesonets Objective Drought Indicator Blends NOAA CPC Vegetation Health Indices NOAA VHI, NDMC/USGS VEGDRI, Climate Engine (NDVI - Landsat & MODIS) Fire Danger Keetch-Byram drought index (KBDI) Evaporative Demand Drought Indices NOAA EDDI, NOAA/USDA ESI Impacts NDMC Drought Impact Reporter, CoCoRaHS Conditions Monitoring, NASS crop condition reports, NOAA Quarterly Regional Climate Impacts Reports

21 Local Input During a shift, traffic is very heavy with 100 s of s in addition to numerous coordination calls with state & regional drought teams. Contributor inputs come in many forms

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24 And then there s Texas (all 254 counties) Texas Recommendations Author s Interpretation

25 USDM Timeline Thursday, Friday, and over the weekend ramp up looking at indicators, obtain dx shapefiles, look at 5-day QPF forecast, review transition , & address lingering issues Monday draft #1 goes out, respond to s, various coordination calls Tuesday respond to s from contributors, more conference calls, map editing, & input verification. Data cutoff is 7 a.m. EST. Draft #2/3 goes out Wednesday author responds to final comments and last minute map edits. Author writes narrative for each region. Final map goes out to the listserv. Final map shapefiles sent out to NDMC for processing and to NOAA CPC Thursday - final map and narrative are released at 8:30 a.m. (ET) and the process starts over again

26 Data Analysis & Map Creation Data Analysis Begins with pulling in the latest Dx shapefiles into ArcMap as well as acquiring the latest data from various sources.

27 Data Analysis Overlay the NWS Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS) 7-day observed precipitation totals over the Dx layers and identify areas of interest

28 Data Analysis Overlay radar beam coverage (at or below 10,000 ft AGL) layer to help verify the radar data

29 Data Analysis Zoom in to take a closer look and add other spatial layers (towns/city, roads, shaded relief)

30 Data Analysis Add other indices (SPI) to see how the precipitation event impacted the numbers at various time scales

31 Data Analysis Add real-time streamflow layer to look at the streamflow response to the event and to identify other areas where flows are low (keeping in mind many rivers are highly managed)

32 Data Analysis add drought impacts layer to see what impacts are being reported through CoCoRaHS

33 Data Analysis add VHI layer to check vegetative health/rangeland conditions

34 Data Analysis start editing the Dx polygon and verification of local input

35 With more input from local experts and higherresolution datasets, the level of detail in the drought depiction has increased considerably over the past 5 years.

36 Weekly Narrative Final step for the USDM author Written Wednesday morning after the map is completed Describes the significant weather events of the week, an overview of the regional changes on the map, drought impacts, and what to expect weather-wise for the week One of the most challenging elements of an authoring shift

37 Website - Accessing USDM Maps & Data

38 New USDM Editing Tool All data contained in an enterprise database with a redundant backup Centralized data storage and access Collaborators can give input directly onto a map layer Data will be available on ArcGIS Pro as an alternative to the on-line tool System allows another author to assume editing duties if an author becomes unavailable System is mirrored at another location

39 Drought Monitoring Challenges in the Great Basin Low density of observing stations Scarcity of drought impacts information (agricultural, ecological, hydrological, socioeconomic) from rural areas across Nevada and western Utah Need to define what specific drought impacts occur in the Great Basin and when they re likely to occur Need for expanded and more consistent coordination with relevant federal, state, and municipal agencies/entities Broaden the mindset that drought in the region impacts sectors beyond water resources

40 THANK YOU! Photo credit: Dave Simeral