This new report from the NOAA Drought Task Force highlights the crucial role NOAA research plays in advancing our ability to prepare for and react to drought. Click here to learn more...

Leadership 

Lead: Marty Hoerling, NOAA ESRL

Co-Lead: Mark Svoboda, University of Nebraska, Drought Mitigation Center

Co-Lead: Eric Wood, Princeton University

Co-Lead: Randy Koster, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Mission

This Drought Task Force is follow-up to the first group, which was established in October 2011 and ran until September 2014. The overall goals of the NOAA Drought Task Force are to achieve significant advances in understanding and in the ability to monitor and predict drought over North America. The Task Force is an initiative of NOAA’s Climate Program Office Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) program. The research results are expected to help advance basic understanding of drought mechanisms, official national drought products, the development of early warning systems by the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), and experimental drought monitoring and prediction activities and tools for operational and service purposes as part of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction's (NCEP) Climate Test Bed. The Task Force will coordinate with other relevant national and international efforts including the emerging National Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) capabilities, and the international effort to develop a Global Drought Information System (GDIS).

This Drought Task Force started its activities in October 2014 and will have a duration of three years. 

Research Objectives

In the following we describe the issues underlying our key research objectives in more detail.