Description:

Drought is a multi-faceted phenomenon that challenges our current prediction capabilities, yet its environmental and economic consequences are among the most serious of all natural disasters. In a warming climate, drought is expected to increase in frequency, duration, and intensity at both regional and global scales. Improving analysis and prediction of all drought types requires the combination of multiple data sources, including remote sensing data, surface observations, and even indicators of societal impact. Satellite hydrological variables and vegetation indices have contributed dramatically to understand the mechanisms of drought occurrence and development, as well as de-couple the drought signals from normal hydrological conditions and vegetation status. Remotely sensed land observations are used to force or parameterize models, and the hydrological outputs provide the foundation for existing drought indicators. However, taking drought monitoring and prediction to the next level not only requires advances in understanding drought mechanisms, but also the societal impacts and how to better manage water resources. There are still many open scientific questions related to data fusion, integration of drought indicators, emerging social media data sources and the optimal combination of these data sets for providing insights to climate, environmental and societal changes with respect to drought events.

Specific topics addressed by presenters could include but are not limited to: current drought prediction science and skill at various lead times; advances in our understanding of the causes and characteristics of drought, through climatological analyses, impacts of land-atmosphere interactions, and numerical simulations; innovative management uses of that science; and case studies illustrating advances in understanding, monitoring and prediction of drought and drought impacts. Further, papers addressing gaps and deficiencies in our current methods for predicting droughts and estimating its effects on vegetation, water resources, and human populations are also invited.