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Drought Interest Group (DIG)
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The WCRP Drought Interest Group (DIG) was formed as part of the WCRP Extremes crosscutting activity following a joint GEWEX-CLIVAR meeting in 2008. DIG aims to identify and leverage current drought research activities already underway within WCRP, especially under CLIVAR and GEWEX, through the activities of the VAMOS panel, the US CLIVAR Drought Working Group, and the GEWEX-Coordinated Energy and Water Cycle Observations Project (CEOP), etc. DIG will also assess the missing links in drought research and coordinate drought research at an international level in order to advance, in particular, predictive understanding of extremes.
APEC Climate Symposium 2013
We are delighted to present to you the First Announcement for the APEC Climate Symposium 2013. This document provides more information about the theme, goals, and program of the event. The theme of this year's symposium is "Regional Cooperation on Drought Prediction Science to Support Disaster Preparedness and Management" and the event will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia from November 11 - 13.
As with previous APCC events, this symposium will present the latest scientific and technological developments in climate prediction and climate information applications. The event will bring scientists and researchers together with representatives from government agencies, NGOs, and the private sector in order to foster a col! laborative dialogue on drought prediction and management. The 3-day conference will include presentations on drought prediction at multiple time-scales, drought impact assessment, the application of advance climate information to decision-making, the development of innovative Early Warning Systems, and methods for disseminating drought information to relevant stakeholders.
We estimate around 100 international and local participants will attend the symposium. We are working closely with the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics (BMKG), the local hosts, to make this a meaningful and productive event. We would also appreciate it if you would circulate this First Announcement among your professional network and encourage talented researchers and scientists to submit abstracts.
Please feel free to contact Ms. Nina Horstmann (horstmann@apcc21.org) or Ms. Sooyang Joo (syjoo@apcc21.org) if you would like to request more information about this year's symposium.
Workshop on Drought Predictability and Prediction
DIG has now embarked on identifying strategic research needs in drought prediction and encouraging increased coordination of regional and international drought-research activities. A WCRP White Paper on ‘Drought Predictability and Prediction in a Changing Climate: Assessing Current Capabilities, User Requirements, and Research Priorities’ has been developed, to assess current prediction capabilities against user needs with the aim of identifying areas that would benefit from international coordination. A workshop was held on this topic on 2-4 March 2011 in Barcelona, Spain: WCRP Workshop on Drought Predictability and Prediction in a Changing Climate: Assessing Current Knowledge and Capabilities, User Requirements and Research Priorities.
Three major action items came out of the workshop, which were to 1) develop a drought cataglogue, 2) define case studies, and 3) develop a drought early warning system. These action items are further detailed in the workshop report.
Workshop on Global Drought Information System
The Eurpean Space Agency hosted the Global Drought Information System (GDIS) workshop at its facility in Frascati, Italy, from 11-13 April 2012. This was organised by the DIG under the third action item of the Barcelona meeting; to develop a drought early warning system.
Read the workshop report here.
Members
The members of the Drought Interest Group are listed here.
The ICPO contact for the Drought Interest Group is Jennifer Riley.
Publications
GDEWS Questionnaire. Questionnaire to assess the regional needs for a GDEWS (Global Drought Early Warning System). We would invite anyone to participate in the survey - please forward any completed questionnaires to Jennifer Riley.
Report on the WCRP Workshop on Drought Predictability and Prediction in a Changing Climate, 2-4 March 2011, Barcelona, Spain.
WCRP White Paper on ‘Drought Predictability and Prediction in a Changing Climate: Assessing Current Capabilities, User Requirements, and Research Priorities’.
Web Resources
A web portal (sac.csic.es/spei/) has been developed that focuses on the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), a recent tool for the analysis and monitoring of droughts.
The web portal provides information on the SPEI and different software tools to calculate SPEI
In addition, the website includes access to a SPEI database that can be obtained at time scales ranging from 1-48 months. the database has been created from information on precipitation and potential evapotranspiration published by the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia ( badc.nerc.ac.uk/browse/badc/cru/data). The information covers the period 1901-2011 at a spatial resolution of 0.5 °. This database can be downloaded in its entirety in netCDF format, or by selecting a specific pixel coordinates.
Finally, a portal has been created that allows the monitoring of real-time drought. it shows the current drought conditions from SPEI worldwide (as of the most current information available on a global scale). The portal allows visualization mapping of the SPEI values at different time scales (3, 6, 9, 12, 24, 36 and 48 months) and time series of the selected areas (either a specific pixel or frame). This information can also be downloaded in netCDF format (the entire database), the pixel of interest or the means of a user-specified frame.
