Advancing scientific understanding of climate, improving society’s ability to plan and respond
Advancing scientific understanding of climate, improving society’s ability to plan and respond
A new report from the NOAA Drought Task Force, “Research to Advance National Drought Monitoring and Prediction Capabilities,” highlights the crucial role NOAA research plays in advancing our ability to prepare for and react to drought.
NOAA’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) program awarded $4.3 million to support 17 new multi-year projects to improve our understanding of drought and advance NOAA’s prediction and monitoring capabilities to better anticipate and respond to drought. MAPP is a part of the Climate Program Office, situated within NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
The Climate Program Office congratulations the Drought Assessment Team, which was awarded a Group Silver Medal for Scientific/Engineering Achievement for their work assessing the origins of the 2012 Central Plains Drought. The group includes CPO’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections (MAPP) Program and the Drought Task Force.
This NOAA Drought Task Force/NIDIS report details the results of an extensive multi-research-group analysis of the causes and predictability of the drought. The report finds that the exceedingly warm and dry conditions that caused the drought were due to a high pressure ridge off the west coast of the United States influenced heavily by anomalous sea surface temperatures. These influences are attributed to natural variability.
Research supported by CPO’s Modeling, Analysis, Prediction, and Projections (MAPP) program has been published online in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
NIDIS’s Claudia Nierenberg and MAPP’s Annarita Mariotti have been invited to speak at 40th Annual Center for Great Plains Studies Symposium “Drought in the Life, Cultures, and Landscapes of the Great Plains.”
A Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has been posted as a short piece on NOAA’s Drought Task Force.
The Drought Task Force held a meeting to discuss the first year’s progress and looking to the future. The meeting took place on Oct 25-26 in Fort Collins, CO.