Today, the NOAA announced $4.9 million in funding for the agency’s labs and research partners to improve drought monitoring and prediction in the American West.
This research combines $3.1 million in funding from NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) program and $1.8 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to improve decision-makers’ capacity to protect life, property and ecosystems in the region from drought.
“Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and the historic Inflation Reduction Act, this investment will support NOAA and its partners in better preparing Western communities for droughts in the coming years and decades,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “By expanding and upgrading our drought monitoring and prediction capabilities, the Biden-Harris Administration is making communities across the American West more resilient to the effects of climate change.”
Drought is a common feature of the U.S. West, driven by the region’s unique geography, location and climate. And it can exact a high toll.
In 2022, a single drought event in America’s West cost $23.3 billion. Federal and state water agencies, Tribal governments, water utilities, electric supply providers, reservoir operators, wildfire managers and other stakeholders frequently pose questions such as: “What is driving the extreme and unprecedented drought conditions in the West?” and “Will the drought end, or is it evidence of a long-term change?” Answers to those questions generated by this foundational and applied science research, will help communities plan and prepare for droughts which are amplified by climate warming.
“The future of the West depends on meeting the crisis of water availability with ingenuity and resolve,” said Sarah Kapnick, Ph.D., NOAA chief scientist. “I’m excited to see the results of these new investments in science that will prepare managers, stakeholders and communities to anticipate, react to and manage the increasing challenges posed by the water systems critical to their lives and economies.”
NOAA’s Climate Program Office’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections (MAPP) program, in collaboration with the NIDIS program, will support seven innovative, impactful projects that will improve the nation’s resilience at a critical time in the fight against the drought crisis. The projects are funded for three years and will cover drought issues across the southwestern U.S.
Visit NOAA’s Inflation Reduction Act website to learn about current and future funding opportunities. Visit the MAPP-NIDIS Drought Research Competition webpage to learn more about current and future MAPP-NIDIS collaborations and competitions.
Funded Projects:
- Investigating local/remote moisture anomalies as monitors/predictors of Southwest U.S. droughts
- This project will reevaluate the role of atmospheric moisture variability caused by the tropical oceans in the southwest United States droughts from May through August and explore its application to the monitoring and prediction of southwest U.S. droughts.
- Project PI: Honghai Zhang, Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Sponsored Research Administration, University of Houston (Houston, TX, 77204-5007)
- Co-PI: Jie He, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA, 30332)
- Award amount: $536,012
- Towards predicting drought and subsequent water resource challenges at landscape-resolving scales across the western U.S.
- This project’s overarching goal is to explain the changing nature of drought and access to water across the West in the 21st century and get this information to decision-makers so that residents, municipalities, and water agencies may protect life and property.
- Project PI: Stefan Rahimi, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA, 90095)
- Co-PI: Benjamin Bass, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA, 90095)
- Co-PI: Alex Hall, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA, 90095)
- Award amount: $745,235
- Understanding and resolving a global discrepancy in near surface water vapor trends between models and observations
- This project aims to understand why atmospheric water vapor has not increased over arid/semi-arid regions in observations, in contrast to our expectations from Earth system models.
- Project PI: Isla Simpson, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, CO, 80301-2252)
- Co-PI: Karen McKinnon, University of California, Los Angeles (LA, California, 90095)
- Award amount: $748,436
- Advancing Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operation and Planning for the West Gulf through Integration of Climate Forecasts and Reservoir Water Balance Predictions
- This project aims to improve accounting and monitoring of the water budget in the west and explore the utility and limitations of climate and Earth system models, and prediction systems in correctly simulating drought events.
- Project PI: Yu Zhang, Dept of Civil Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, (Arlington, TX, 76019)
- Co-PI: Dong-Jun Seo, University of Texas at Arlington, (Arlington, TX 76019)
- Co-PI: Sarah Fakhreddine, Carnegie Mellon University, (Pittsburgh, PA 15213)
- Collaborators: Nelun Fernando (Texas Water Development Board), Kris Lander, (NWS West Gulf River Forecast Center), John Hunter, (US Army Corps of Engineers), Dagmar Llewellyn, (US Bureau of Reclamation, Water Management Division), Kathleen Holman, (Technical Service Center, Technical Service Center), Feiyu Lu, (NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab)
- Award amount: $719,880
- Understanding heatwave-snow drought relationships across the western United States
- This research will help to unpack the long-term influence of warming and changing precipitation (or aridity) patterns on snowpack and will characterize how much heatwaves have historically influenced both isolated and serial snow drought conditions in the western United States.
- PI: Laurie Huning, California State University, Long Beach, (Long Beach, CA, 90840)
- Co-PI: Alan Rhoades, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, (Berkeley, CA 94720)
- Co-PI: Dan McEvoy, Desert Research Institute, Western Regional Climate Center (Reno, NV, 89512)
- Award amount: $747,127
- Advancing understanding of plant-drought interactions for landscape to regional scale drought prediction
- This study aims to better understand vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks that lead to intensifying and sustaining drought, and to increase understanding of interactions of vegetation within the physical climate system.
- PI: Aleya Kaushik, University of Colorado Boulder, (Boulder, CO, 80309)
- Co-PI: Bharat Rastogi, University of Colorado Boulder, (Boulder, CO, 80305)
- Co-PI: John Miller, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, (Boulder, CO, 80305)
- Co-PI: Lori Bruhwiler, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, (Boulder, CO, 80305)
- Award amount: $599,968
- Improving hydroclimate forecasts by multi-model combination approaches for enhanced reservoir operations on the Colorado River
- This project will develop new decision making support tools to improve Colorado River Basin streamflow forecast models used to make water resources decisions. The project will accomplish this by using NOAA’s advanced seasonal prediction systems and new machine learning techniques to improve 0-24 month lead predictions key to water management in the Basin.
- PI: Rajagopalan Balaji, Department of Civil, Env. and Arch. Eng. & NOAA/NCEP/NWS/CPC Fellow, CIRES, University of Colorado, (Boulder, CO 80309-0428)
- Co-PI: Emerson LaJoie, NOAA/NCEP/NWS/CPC, (College Park, MD, 20740)
- Collaborators: Sarah Baker, (Civil Engineer, Bureau of Reclamation), Seth Shanahan, (Colorado River, Southern Nevada Water Authority), Matthew Rosencrans, (NOAA/NCEP/NWS/CPC), Paul Miller, (NOAA-CBRFC)
- Award amount: $750,000