Today is WorldWaterDay. Droughts are considered a slow-motion disaster—slowly building in severity until they cause losses affecting agriculture, water resources, energy production, and public health. Learn more about how the U.S. monitors drought:
, and NOAA. NCEI scientists are among the authors of the monitor, and NCEI data feed into the assessment.—for growing crops, managing water supplies, generating power, and fighting wildfires. The USDA uses the map to determine eligibility for monetary relief, and state and local authorities use it to trigger responses related to issues such as reservoir levels.
The stakes are high, and those who use the map aren’t always happy with what they see on it—partly because the USDM reflects several types of drought at multiple time scales, all on a single map. To withstand the criticism, the authors need to have thick skin and confidence in their methods. “We have to basically put force fields around us to deflect the harassment and the political influence,” says Richard Heim, an NCEI scientist and an author of the U.S. Drought Monitor. “The map and process must be totally objective.”The U.S. Drought Monitor releases maps detailing the location and intensity of drought in the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands and Virgin Islands.
The categories depict how rare the drought intensity is. A D1 drought, for example, occurs on average 11%–20% of the time in the historical record—that is, in the range of once every 5–10 years. A D4 drought occurs on average up to 2% of the time, meaning once every 50 years or even less frequently. Data are collected through 8 a.m. ET Tuesday, and the new maps are released on Thursday. A lot of work happens in that compressed time frame because the map is not the simple output of a statistical model. Instead, it draws on a broad range of numerical data as well as input from local observers, all filtered through the seasoned judgment of drought experts.
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