NOAA 01-102
CONTACT: Patricia Viets, NOAA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(301) 457-5005
October 1, 2001
NOAA's SATELLITES REVEAL DROUGHT CONDITIONS
IN 20 PERCENT OF THE WORLD
A new satellite-based method for early detection, monitoring and analysis of
drought shows that nearly 20 percent of the world's landmass has been stricken
by drought over the past two years, according to scientists at the Commerce
Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Scientists at NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information
Service (NESDIS) in Camp Springs, Md., used solar radiation detected from an
instrument onboard NOAA's polar orbiting satellites, called the Advanced Very
High Resolution Radiometer. The solar radiation was observed in three
wavelengths of the solar spectrum visible, near infrared and thermal to study
vegetation health, moisture, and thermal conditions.
"Satellite data are important to our understanding of the world's climate,
particularly in regions of the world where routine surface measurements are
sometimes difficult to obtain," said Felix Kogan, the NOAA scientist who
developed the new drought detection methodology. "This method has been tested
worldwide for eight years and has proven to be an excellent vehicle for early
drought detection and monitoring, as well as for assessing the impacts of
droughts."
NOAA is providing information on drought to customers around the world. Many
countries in Africa, Asia and North America experienced the effects of two-year
droughts.
Long, intensive spring and summer dryness developed in the southern and western
United States (and neighboring regions of Canada) during 2000 and 2001 with
Texas experiencing severe droughts. Satellite data identified large areas in the
Northwest that were vulnerable to intensive fire activity. During the two-year
period, active fires consumed large areas of forested land.
In the Horn of Africa, early drought signs were recorded in January 2000. Over
the next four months, the drought expanded and intensified, creating food
shortages and outbreak of disease that affected millions of inhabitants in
Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and other regions.
In Asia, crop producing regions and rangelands of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran,
India, Mongolia and China were severely hit by spring and summer dryness during
2000 and 2001. The worst situation was observed in Afghanistan and Pakistan
where approximately 60 and 40 percent of these countries, respectively,
suffer from intensive drought in 2001. Unusual summer dryness also affected
countries in the Caspian Sea region.
The new method of drought detection and monitoring has been recognized by
the global scientific and operational community and has been publicized by the
American Meteorological Society, UN-based organizations and international remote
sensing publications. NOAA's data are widely distributed to the United States
and global institutions provided through the NOAA Web site:
http://orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/crad/sat/surf/vci.
NESDIS is the nation's primary source of space-based meteorological and
climate data. NESDIS operates the nation's environmental satellites, which are
used for weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and other environmental
applications such as fire detection, ozone monitoring, and sea surface
temperature measurements. NESDIS also operates three data centers, which
house global data bases in climatology, oceanography, solid earth geophysics,
marine geology and geophysics, solar-terrestrial physics and paleoclimatology.
To learn more about NESDIS, please visit
http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/.
