A Modern, Sector-Specific Approach to Drought Early Warning

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA's) National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and Physical Sciences Laboratory are partnering with the California Department of Water Resources, NOAA National Weather Service and National Center for Environmental Information, and others to deliver a user-oriented and evidence-based approach to drought early warning for sectors of our Nation’s economy susceptible to the hazards of too much and too little water. From August 2024 - July 2025, this partnership is piloting a drought resilience framework prototype for Southern California, which will produce sector-specific drought scenarios based on tailored monitoring and forecasting information that will enable users to make proactive decisions ahead of drought.

The pilot builds on well-established California-Nevada Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) communication and partner networks. Key outputs of this modern approach to Drought Early Warning include scenarios that provide users with forward-looking outlooks of the most likely drought outcomes up to one year into the future. Partners will be able to use these scenarios to determine their own drought risk, project likely drought impacts, and guide proactive decision-making across the region. Drought scenarios are based on integrated information products, services, and experimental applications that include observations, forecasts, and deep knowledge of local-to-regional-scale drought behavior. The sectors involved in this Southern California pilot are agriculture, water utilities, and public health.

This effort builds upon the call from the 2019 National Drought Forum to “communicate drought conditions, outlooks, and impacts through vehicles tailored to specific watersheds, populations, and sectors.” The pilot is being designed to support discovery of the feasibility, opportunities, and barriers to deliver targeted drought early warning information, improve the process in real time, and determine scalability to other regions. It will also offer opportunities to evaluate and incorporate new monitoring and forecast information in a user-centric approach.