HR: 11:40h
AN: U32C-02    [Abstracts]
TI: Development and Applications of the U.S. Drought Monitor and North America Drought Monitor
AU: * Heim, R R
EM: richard.heim@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA National Climatic Data Center, 151 Patton Avenue, Asheville, NC 28801, United States
AB: Drought is an important climatological phenomenon which has significant socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Several drought indices have been developed during the last hundred years to quantify drought, but all of them either were developed for specific applications and/or regions, or have limitations which restrict their use. In the U.S., a drought monitoring tool was developed in the late 1990s through a federal-state collaborative effort to consolidate and centralize drought monitoring activities. This tool, the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), consists of a weekly map and narrative product which describes current drought conditions according to a scale ranging from moderate drought (D1) to exceptional drought (D4). Conditions which are dry but not yet of drought severity are categorized as abnormally dry (D0). The USDM draws its strength from the collaborative input at the federal (USDA, NOAA), regional (NOAA Regional Climate Centers), state, and local levels and from the objective synthesis of several drought-related indices. In late 2002, the methodology of the USDM was extended internationally to develop the North America Drought Monitor (NADM), which is a monthly map and narrative product that describes drought across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. This paper will describe the development of the USDM and NADM, and discuss examples of their applications.
UR: http:www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/monitoring/drought/nadm/index.html DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 1812 Drought
DE: 3309 Climatology (1616, 1620, 3305, 4215, 8408)
DE: 9350 North America
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly