Drought Outlook Products Review

Drought Outlook Products Review

This report presents a review of currently available drought forecast tools and research into drought forecasting, with the goal of identifying a suitable approach for the development of a prototype drought outlook tool for northern Australia. Key findings include:

• Two operational drought forecast tools are currently available on-line; these are (i) the US Drought Outlook (available as monthly and seasonal/3-month drought forecasts) produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and available through the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS); and (ii) the World Bank Global Forecast Drought Tool developed by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at Columbia University, in collaboration with the CPC and University of Maine.
• The US Monthly and Seasonal Drought Outlooks, presented as forecast maps, are developed by merging data from a number of sources: CPC temperature and precipitation outlooks; long lead forecasts such as the National Centres for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast System (CFS) and the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) system; short-term weather forecasts from NCEP and ECMWF; and current conditions from the US Drought Monitor.
• The World Bank Global Forecast Drought Tool, presented as global/regional forecast drought severity and drought risk maps, provides probabilistic forecasts of future Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) as an indicator of drought for a range of accumulation periods (3, 6, 9 or 12 months) based on monthly precipitation predictions from multiple NMME models and initial observed SPI conditions.
• Considerable ongoing research is conducted into drought forecasting and published in the academic literature; approaches include statistical, dynamical and hybrid prediction methods. Three reviews of drought forecasting approaches have also been published, with discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches, while the NOAA Drought Task Force has developed a Drought Capability Assessment Protocol in an attempt to better ensure the rigorous assessment of research in order to build capability.
• Ongoing gaps and challenges identified by the NOAA Drought Task Force in 2016 include improving the objectivity of inputs into drought monitoring tools; ensuring accurate data collection from gauge-based observation networks and real-time merging of in-situ observations and (bias-corrected) satellite data; improvements in prediction of the full drought cycle (onset, duration, severity, recovery); improved understanding of key governing processes in the coupled ocean-atmosphere-land system and their predictability; developing hydrological seasonal prediction systems; and development of a seamless ensemble-based drought monitoring and prediction system.
• Development of a prototype drought outlook tool for northern Australia might feasibly be based on the simplified drought forecasting approach of IRI's World Bank Global Forecast Drought Tool, using the Combined Drought Index (CDI) currently under development through NACP in conjunction with ACCESS-S model SCF/precipitation forecasts.

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