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MAPP/NIDIS Drought Task Force I
NOAA's Drought Task Force I was established in October 2011 with the ambitious goal of achieving significant new advances in the ability to understand, monitor, and predict drought over North America. The Task Force (duration was October 2011–September 2014) was an initiative of NOAA’s Climate Program Office's Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) program in partnership with the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).
It brought together over thirty leading MAPP-funded drought scientists from multiple academic and federal institutions—including scientists from NOAA’s research laboratories and centers, NASA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and many universities—in a concerted research effort that built on individual MAPP research projects. These projects spanned the wide spectrum of drought research needed to make fundamental advances, from those aimed at the basic understanding of drought mechanisms to those aimed at testing new drought monitoring and prediction tools for operational and service purposes (as part of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction's Climate Test Bed).
The Drought Task Force provided focus and coordination to MAPP drought research activities, and also facilitated synergies with other national and international drought research efforts, including those by the Global Drought Information System (GDIS).
The Drought Task Force I leads were:
- Sigfried Schubert (Lead), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Christa Peters-Lidard (Co-Lead), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Kingtse Mo (Co-Lead), NOAA Climate Prediction Center
- Andy Wood (Co-Lead), NCAR Research Applications Laboratory
Research Snapshot
Results of this research
Emergent opportunities arose to synthesize collective drought efforts through technical reports, review articles, or journal special collections and to engage with the rest of the community via workshops and meeting sessions. The Drought Task Force I produced:
- Assessment Report: Causes and Predictability of the 2011 to 2014 California Drought
- Assessment Report: An Interpretation of the Origins of the 2012 Central Great Plains Drought
- American Meteorological Society Journal of Hydrometeorology Special Collection: Advancing Drought Monitoring and Prediction
- Drought Task Force Assessment Protocol (2013)
- American Meteorological Society Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society DTF I October 2012 Meeting Summary: Advancing Drought Understanding, Monitoring, and Prediction
- What Can Drought-Stricken California Expect from the El Niño Winter Forecast? (2016)