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California and Nevada’s climate and weather patterns create fire-prone environments for many wildland–urban interface communities, highlighting the value in understanding the relationships between drought and wildfire. More specifically, information is needed on how drought indices are related to fire danger outputs that are commonly used in fire management.

In 2011, Texas experienced severe agricultural loss, wildfires, and widespread tree mortality in its worst drought since 2000. According to the US Drought Monitor, more than 80% of Texas land area experienced exceptional drought conditions from the spring of 2011 to the beginning of 2012. While these tools are useful for looking at drought conditions at the state level, measuring the local impacts of drought, such as tree mortality, is often challenging. To investigate if satellite data can be used to provide estimates on how urban trees respond to widespread drought, academic and federal researchers partnered with the NASA DEVELOP program.

In an era of increasing wealth of earth observations, approaches for quickly accessing, analyzing, and visualizing environmental data to better inform decision making at relevant scales is needed. Climate Engine enables users to utilize on-demand cloud computing and visualization to analyze and interact with climate and earth observations for decision support related to drought, water use, agriculture, wildfire, and ecology.

Drought can have a significant impact on the management and operations of water utilities, from loss of water supply and poor source water quality to increased demand from customers and reduced revenues. Changing conditions in precipitation, snowpack, soil moisture, temperature, and evapotranspiration must be well monitored and better forecasted to provide water managers early warning of drought. Water managers facing water shortages need access to new technologies, tools, and resources to better understand and reduce drought risk to their water supply systems.

Drought is a normal part of our climate cycle. Often underestimated due to its slow onset, drought stands as the second most costly hazard in the United States. According to the U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, generated at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), 26 drought events between 1980 and 2018 caused specific losses over $1.0 Billion, resulting in $244.3 Billion in direct damages from those events alone. This does not include numerous drought events with losses under $1 Billion as well as indirect impact of drought to the economy. Second only to tropical cyclones, drought affects agriculture, water supply, energy, wildlife, public health, and has many other economic, environmental, and social impacts.

Elizabeth Weight, CIRES/NIDIS Regional Drought Information Systems Coordinator, represented NIDIS and CIRES in the May 2018 workshop “Advancing Sustainability of U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Drylands.” Ms. Weight’s contribution to the workshop, synthesized in the proceedings, focused on drought early warning systems as a potential innovative bi-national research collaboration and management solution for U.S.-Mexico transboundary drylands areas.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), part of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, has launched an interactive dashboard that displays drought vulnerability at the state and county level based on Colorado’s 2018 Drought Plan. An Esri Story Map, the platform takes users through visual summaries of Colorado drought risk by sectors, using images and graphs to provide an interactive and engaging experience.

The Colorado River provides water to almost 40 million people and 4 million acres of farmland. Since 2000, historically dry conditions have added stress to the Colorado River’s water resources. As a result, the risk of reaching critically low elevations at Lakes Powell and Mead has increased nearly four-fold over the past decade. Critically low reservoir levels could affect compliance with the 1922 Colorado River Compact; Lake Powell could drop below the level required to generate hydropower; and the economies, livelihoods, and natural resources of the Basin states could be negatively impacted.

Kicked off in March 2017, the Sub-Seasonal Climate Forecast Rodeo comprised of a year-long, real-time forecasting competition. The Bureau of Reclamation sponsored the competition in partnership with NOAA, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and California Department of Water Resources.

Droughts are not commonly thought of as public health threats. The often-slow onset of drought, compared to other extremes, makes it difficult to identify the links between the physical characteristics of drought and societal impacts. California is no stranger to drought, and the most recent drought brought to the forefront the impacts of drought on health, including decreased water quantity and quality, coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever) outbreaks, increased mortality rates, and adverse mental health outcomes as livelihoods are challenged. In a post-drought coordination workshop, the California-Nevada Drought Early Warning System network identified better preparing public health professionals for drought as a priority.