Challenges in the Assessment and Presentation of California Drought Conditions

The water year 2007-08 exhibited a pattern similar to that projected by climate models, with a contracted wet season followed by a warm spring. These conditions exacerbated antecedent dry conditions to set in place moderate to severe drought conditions over most of the state by September 2008. This sequence of events has brought to light the challenges in depicting and communicating drought to California's public, and also relating California to drought elsewhere in the U.S. Through ties with the NIDIS effort, the Western Regional Climate Center has an array of climatological resources that can be utilized in the assessment of drought, with a new WestWide Drought Tracker that is in development. There are some web resources available to access these products, including a California-specific climate data access interface. The most significant challenge is how to accurately present a drought in California using these and other data products in a manner the user can understand, with its unique water storage and supply system, in combination with natural environmental conditions. Suggestions to ameliorate this difficulty will be discussed, with the possible development of new products for drought monitoring that are specific to the state of California that can be incorporated into a NIDIS or similar infrastructure.