The idea of updating and expanding a national drought atlas was developed from the original Drought Atlas that was done in conjunction with the United States Army Corps of Engineers by Hoskings, Wallis and Guttman in the early 1990s. The original Drought Atlas consisted of those stations in the Historical Climate Network (HCN), numbering approximately 1,000 stations. The period of record at the time was limited, as many stations only had records from the 1940s to present, and these data points were put into their respective climate divisions. A monthly time step was used to calculate the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). The new Drought Risk Atlas brings precise climatological data down to spatial scales that would allow decision makers to use this tool to better understand drought in their respective region and to make better decisions.
For the new national Drought Risk Atlas, the idea was to expand the data both in the number of stations analyzed and the period of record to include the most complete long-term stations, some of which are not part of the HCN. Using a weekly time-step to calculate multiple drought indices at each station location, not on a climate division scale, allows for a more precise representation of drought histories. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), Deciles, United States Drought Monitor and other climatological data are included in the new Drought Risk Atlas. Along with the climatological data, gridded maps created on a weekly time-step are available for the entire United States.
This work is funded under a grant from the Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP) of the NOAA-Climate Program Office. Additional Funding was provided by the NIDIS Program Office and the USDA-Risk Management Service (RMA).