NOAA Drought Task Force: A Coordinated Research Initiative to Advance Drought Understanding, Monitoring and Prediction

The NOAA's Drought Task Force was first established in October 2011 and renewed in October 2014 with the goal of achieving significant new advances in the ability to understand, monitor and predict drought over North America. The Task Force is an initiative of NOAA's Climate Program Office Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) program in support of the National Integrated Drought Information System NIDIS. The Drought Task Force also represents an important research contribution to efforts to develop an international Global Drought Information System (GDIS). The Drought Task Force brings together leading drought scientists research laboratories and/or operational centers from NOAA, other U.S. agencies laboratories and academia. Their concerted research effort builds on individual MAPP research projects and related drought-research sector developments. The projects span the wide spectrum of drought research needed to make fundamental advances, from those aimed at the basic understanding of drought mechanisms to those evaluating new drought monitoring and prediction tools for operational and service purposes. This contribution will present an overview of Drought Task Force activities and plans to date, including highlights of research activities and how the group has been working in partnership with NIDIS and synergy with GDIS to advance the science underpinning the development, assessment and provision of drought information.