WestWide Drought Tracker: Drought monitoring and climate indices in the western United States

Drought assessment in the western United States is a challenging task given the physical and societal facets that define the landscape. Near real-time monitoring of climatic and drought conditions is hampered by the sparseness of observational networks and lack of a cohesive database that assimilates data at scales pertinent to the diversity of user groups. The user community, including farmers, ranchers, resource managers, local and state government, researchers and policy makers, continues to express an increasing need for local to regional scale information. The WestWide Drought Tracker (WWDT) is an effort to meet these and other challenges by creating a centralized location where users can access information for a self-defined local area. User surveys of drought information needs around the region have been utilized in creating the website and selecting products for incorporation in the WWDT, and they will be asked for feedback on the project as progress is made in its development. The WWDT website builds on past successful efforts at the Western Regional Climate Center, including Westmap, utilizing gridded climate and hydrologic data, as well as station data from a variety of networks. Initial products include fine-scale PRISM gridded drought indices such as the Standardized Precipitation Index, Palmer Drought Severity Index, and the Self-Calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index, as well as elements such as temperature and precipitation. Although the Palmer indices generally perform better in the eastern US, these popular products are presented for completeness of the WWDT. Additional needs have been expressed for water demand products, portraying the spatial departures from average of evaporation, transpiration, and snow sublimation. To meet these needs, VIC modeled hydrological data will be added, including both historical and current updates. The presentation will summarize activities and applications tools to be employed by WWDT, and of future directions.