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New Report on Drought Assessment in a Changing Climate
Key Points
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Climate change is causing the probability of extreme events, like drought, to change, a phenomenon known statistically as “non-stationarity.”
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Challenges include identifying the differences between permanent change (e.g., long-term trends towards wetter or drier conditions) and temporary anomalies
from normal conditions (e.g., drought).
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Changes in how we assess drought could impact disaster relief and adaptation programs and inform future policy.
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To improve drought assessment, the report identifies priority actions and research questions organized around
15
focus areas.
The changing climate is causing the probability of extreme events, like drought, to change, a phenomenon known as non-stationarity. Non-stationarity poses new challenges that include
identifying the differences between permanent change (e.g., trends towards wetter or drier conditions) and temporary anomalies from normal conditions (e.g., drought). Changes in how we assess drought could impact disaster relief and adaptation programs and
inform future policy.
To address these challenges, NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and USDA Climate Hubs released the report,
Drought
Assessment in a Changing Climate: Priority Actions and Research Needs,
with additional support provided by the University of Colorado Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).
The report captures the ideas and feedback of more than 100 subject matter experts from over 44 institutions across the drought research and practitioner communities. This report
includes a state of the science overview on drought in a changing climate and identifies some of the most pressing and strategic areas of research and action to advance the knowledge and understanding of drought assessment.
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