Drought Early Warning and Forecasting

Chris Funk is a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Center and Research Director for the Climate Hazards Center at University of California, Santa Barbara, United States. Since 1999 he has worked closely with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, developing new techniques, data sets, and methods for improved drought early warning. He has published over 140 papers and reports, and currently helps guide the development of early warning and climate adaptation science for the U.S. Geological Survey, working closely with partners from UCSB, USAID, NASA, and NOAA. Shraddhanand Shukla is a researcher with the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, United States. He is a large-scale hydrologist with primary research interests and over 10 years of experience in drought monitoring and forecasting. He has published over 45 peer-reviewed journal articles. His current work, which is funded by NASA, NOAA, USAGS, USAID, NSF, etc., focuses primarily on improving existing drought monitoring and early warning capabilities nationally (California and Nevada region) and internationally (primarily Africa and the Middle East) using remote sensing datasets, large-scale hydrologic models, and weather/climate forecasts.

1. Droughts, governance, disasters, and response systems2. Drought early warning—definitions, challenges, and opportunities3. Drought early warning systems4. Tools of the trade 1—weather and climate forecasts5. Tools of the trade 2—land surface models6. Tools of the trade 3—mapping exposure and vulnerability7. Theory—understanding atmospheric demand in a warming world8. Theory—indices for measuring drought severity9. Sources of drought early warning skill, staged prediction systems, and an example for Somalia10. Practice—evaluating forecast skill11. Practice—integrating observations and climate forecasts12. Practice—actionable information and decision-making networks13. Final thoughts