A global drought monitoring web portal

Following a 2010 international drought meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, USA, the National Integrated Drought Information System's (NIDIS) US Drought Portal offered to develop and host a prototype Global Drought Monitoring web portal (GDMwp). This effort will be a stepping stone to a Global Drought Early Warning System (GDEWS). The GDMwp participation includes NIDIS, the Group on Earth Observations, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The GDMwp will be built upon technologies developed for the US Drought Portal and will provide a number of different depictions of drought on the global-scale, developed using data from WMO World Data Centers. Products will include the Standardized Precipitation Index at various time-scales, and possibly precipitation, Palmer drought indices, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index or Vegetation Health depictions. The GDMwp will also serve as a launching point to continental-scale drought depictions where not only an international assessment such as the North American Drought Monitor could reside, but also indicators used to develop the assessment. The initial prototype of this portal should be available in 2011.