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A recent international review article, "Using soil moisture information to better understand and predict wildfire danger: A review of recent developments and outstanding questions," summarizes the growing body of evidence indicating that greater use of soil moisture information in fire danger rating systems could lead to earlier warning of wildfire danger, and better forecasts of wildfire occurrence and size. 

In recent years, wildfires have become more frequent, larger, and burn at higher severity across the western United States and especially in California. A recently published NIDIS-funded study led by scientists with the Desert Research Institute was motivated by an extended dry spell in the winter of 2021-2022 following multiple severe high elevation fires in California.

The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) is excited to co-chair several town halls and oral/poster sessions at the 103rd meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in January 2023. These sessions will cover topics such as megadroughts in the western U.S., soil moisture data, drought analysis and prediction, service delivery lessons, and translating climate science into action. 

These ten maps provide an overview of water storage in the West and a winter snow drought outlook for Water Year 2023. The maps  show how previous La Niña winters have impacted precipitation and temperature across the U.S., the latest National Weather Service outlooks that are influenced by these past La Niña events, and water supply issues in the West, and snow drought conditions.

According to recent research led by Benjamin Cook (NASA Goddard) and a team of international scientists, climate change is likely to increase future megadrought risk through regional declines in precipitation and widespread increases in evaporative demand. The impacts of an ongoing megadrought in Southwestern North America (2000–present), amplified by climate change, suggest that these events will significantly strain water resources and present major resiliency challenges in the future.

NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) has announced a total annual award of more than $6.2 million to support 12 new, innovative, and impactful projects that will improve our nation’s resilience at a critical time in the fight against the drought crisis. The projects will focus on ecological drought and building tribal drought resilience.

Through the Fall 2022 NASA DEVELOP team, early-career scientists aim to understand how soil moisture and fire fuel behavior preceding wildfires can inform future fire and drought monitoring.

In two recent studies, UCLA’s Land Surface Hydrology Group examined western U.S. streamflow declines in response to climate warming and found they are expected to be asymmetric depending on the season in which most warming occurs.

In a new NIDIS-funded study, authors Richard Seager, Mingfang Ting, Patrick Alexander, Jennifer Nakamura, Haibo Liu, Cuihua Li, and Isla R. Simpson use reanalyses and sea surface temperature-forced climate models to examine what large-scale atmosphere-ocean conditions were responsible for the onset and intensification of this latest widespread and severe drought in southwestern North America. 

In response to these needs expressed by tribal partners, NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) is pleased to announce a new map customization feature for Tribal Nations. Developed in collaboration with NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), this feature allows users to display reservation boundaries on any map on Drought.gov.