Recent Advances in Indicators for Drought Monitoring and Prediction
Tuesday, August 25th at 2pm Eastern
Droughts are an annual occurrence, and recent droughts have highlighted the considerable agricultural impacts and economic costs of these events. Monitoring the state of droughts depends on integrating multiple indicators that each capture particular aspects of hydrologic impact and various types and phases of drought. As the capabilities of land-surface models and remote sensing have improved, important physical processes such as dynamic, interactive vegetation phenology, groundwater, and snowpack evolution now support a range of drought indicators that better reflect coupled water, energy and carbon cycle processes. In this work, we discuss these advances, including newer classes of indicators that can be applied to improve the characterization of drought onset, severity and duration. We utilize a new model-based drought reconstruction to illustrate the role of dynamic phenology and groundwater in drought assessment. Further, through case studies on flash droughts, snow droughts, and drought recovery, we illustrate the potential advantages of advanced model physics and observational capabilities, especially from remote sensing, in characterizing droughts.
Dr. Christa D. Peters-Lidard is currently the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Acting Chief Scientist as well as the Deputy Director for Hydrosphere, Biosphere, and Geophysics in the Earth Sciences Division. She was a Physical Scientist in the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory from 2001-2015, and Lab Chief from 2005-2012. Her research interests include land-atmosphere interactions, soil moisture measurement and modeling, and the application of high-performance computing and communications technologies in Earth system modeling, for which her Land Information System team was awarded the 2005 NASA Software of the Year Award. She was elected as an AMS Fellow in 2012 and an AGU Fellow in 2018. Her Ph.D. is from the Water Resources Program in the Department of Civil Engineering and Operations Research at Princeton University.
