NIDIS Invests Up to $4 Million to Support Drought Assessment in a Changing Climate

NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) has announced up to $4 million in funding for 8 two-year projects as part of the Fiscal Year 2025 NIDIS Coping with Drought: Understanding and Assessing Drought in a Changing Climate competition. This competition seeks projects focused on improving drought indicator performance to account for non-stationarity with the goal of more accurate drought assessments that support communities in preparing for, mitigating, and responding to drought.

In Fiscal Year 2025, approximately $2 million will be available for the first year of funding for up to 8 new awards, pending budget appropriations. It is anticipated that most awards will be at a funding level between $50,000 and $250,000 per year over 2 years for a total of up to $500,000.

Over the last several years, concerns have been raised about the intensity, duration, and frequency of droughts changing in the future. This poses new challenges for drought assessment. Current methods for assessing drought conditions do not consistently and deliberately consider drought in the context of climate change, thereby unintentionally promoting drought response strategies that are limited in building long-term resilience in a changing climate. 

Today, the changing climate is causing the probability of extreme events to change, a phenomenon known statistically as non-stationarity. Non-stationarity describes a statistical trend(s) that might be evident in a time series of any element, variable, or drought index. While changes over time in statistical properties, such as central tendency and variance, may be driven by many sources, this grant competition will focus on trends as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change.

Research has shown drought indicators are sensitive to climate change and non-stationarity. More specifically, drought indices and models, which represent physical drought indicators, are very sensitive to the reference period chosen to assess current conditions. 

Example research questions include:

• How well do current drought indices depict drought conditions, and are they effective given regional differences in non-stationarity?
• How is the regional variability of drought indicators and indices changing over time, with climate change? 
• How can existing or new drought indicators or indices (e.g., snowpack, groundwater, etc.) be utilized or adapted to improve drought assessment and predictability in a changing climate?
• In some climates, low-frequency, high-intensity precipitation events are becoming more common. How are these events reflected in drought indicators and/or indices, and how does this impact drought assessment temporally and spatially? 
• How can drought indices better reflect how the intensity of an event affects drought conditions? In the case of high-intensity precipitation events, are there conditions when current drought indices no longer accurately represent drought on the ground? If so, how can these times be objectively identified?

This competition addresses needs identified in the NOAA/NIDIS Drought Assessment in a Changing Climate Technical Memorandum, based on a technical workshop co-hosted by NIDIS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Climate Hubs. The Technical Memorandum captures the input from more than 100 subject matter experts, who during the meeting identified priority actions and outstanding research questions across fifteen focus areas. This Technical Memorandum is the focus of the Fiscal Year 2025 NIDIS Coping with Drought grant competition, which seeks projects to advance a key focus area: “Improving Drought Indicator Performance.” 

"The development of the Drought Assessment in a Changing Climate Technical Memorandum represented a significant investment of time and energy by NIDIS and our partners across the drought community," said Veva Deheza, the Executive Director of NIDIS. "NIDIS is very excited to move this effort forward with the commitment of up to $4 million to fund research that will enable communities to build long-term drought resilience."

Important Dates:

• Letters of Intent (LOI) are due on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 by 11:59 p.m. ET. 
• The deadline for application submission is Monday, December 9, 2024 by 11:59 p.m. ET. 
• Letters of Intent or applications received after the above deadlines will not be reviewed or considered.

NIDIS will also be hosting two informational webinars:

• Fiscal Year 2025 Coping with Drought Competition Informational Webinar
  • Thursday, August 22, 2024 at 1 p.m. ET
  • Register here
• Fiscal Year 2025 Coping with Drought Post-LOI Informational Webinar
  • Wednesday, October 23, 2024 at 1 p.m. ET
  • Register here

Both informational webinars will be recorded and posted on the competition web page.

View the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), or learn more about the NIDIS Coping with Drought Competition.