Identification

Title

High resolution forecasting of summer drought in the Western United States

Abstract

Drought monitoring and forecasting systems are used in the United States (U.S.) to inform drought management decisions. Drought forecasting efforts have often been conducted and evaluated at coarse spatial resolutions (i.e., > 10-km), which miss key local drought information at higher resolutions. Addressing the importance of forecasting drought at high resolutions, this study develops statistical models to evaluate 1- to 3-month lead time predictability of meteorological and agricultural summer drought across the western U.S. at a 4-km resolution. Our high-resolution drought predictions have statistically significant skill (p <= 0.05) across 70%-100% of the western U.S., varying by evaluation metric and lead time. 1- to 3-month lead time drought forecasts accurately represent monitored summer drought spatial patterns during major drought events, the interannual variability of drought area from 1982 to 2020 (r = 0.84-0.93), and drought trends (r = 0.94-0.97). 71% of western U.S summer drought area interannual variability can be explained by cold-season (November-February) climate conditions alone allowing skillful 3-month lead time predictions. Pre-summer drought conditions (represented by drought indices) are the most important predictors for summer drought. Thus, the statistical models developed in this study heavily rely on the autocorrelation of chosen agricultural and meteorological drought indices which estimate land surface moisture memory. Indeed, prediction skill strongly correlates with persistence of drought conditions (r >= 0.73). This study is intended to support future development of operational drought early warning systems that inform drought management.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7377dnm

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-03-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact