Integrating NOAA-National Water Model Forecasting Capabilities with Statewide and Local Drought Planning for Enhanced Decision Support and Drought Mitigation
Abstract
Dry weather continues to be problematic throughout the U.S. for Western states, and climate change predictions indicate droughts will only worsen in both duration and intensity. Stakeholders continue to tell the science community that drought forecasting research, vulnerability information (including economic assessments of drought risk), and technology innovations to enhance communication of drought science are a key to future drought preparedness. Lynker Technologies has been engaged in several aspects of drought science and planning. The current work aimed to leverage and tightly integrate four major drought monitoring activities: (i) Development and testing of NOAA-National Weather Service's next generation hydrologic forecasting system - the National Water Model (NWM); (ii) State Drought planning - specifically the development of a multi-sector drought impacts database and vulnerability study; (iii) development of serious 'Drought Games'; and (iv) developing water data visualization and water management decision support technologies. Using a water app - Tethys - we have developed a prototype decision support tool that provides opportunities for better spatial and temporal analysis of drought events along with related impacts and learned management lessons important for future mitigation of drought impacts. Development of the DSS tool is exploratory in nature with the notion that there may be multiple advantages to incorporating state scale hazard, impacts and planning data in to one, flexible and accessible (app-based) environment. Initial results indicate such a tool can have use in sharing our current understanding of drought phenomena, integrating current forecasting capabilities, and relating drought characteristics and model predictions to drought thresholds, impacts and other indicators.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H51H1399A
- Keywords:
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- 1812 Drought;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1817 Extreme events;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1833 Hydroclimatology;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY