NOAA Drought Seminar Series: Flash Drought and Hydrological Prediction
This seminar will cover two topics. The first part addresses the causes of flash drought, using reanalysis data to quantify the relative impacts of evapotranspiration and precipitation anomalies on their development. Key to the analysis is an innovative approach for characterizing evapotranspiration’s role in producing flash droughts through consideration of its connection to soil moisture state.
The second part of the seminar addresses hydrological drought through an analysis of streamflow predictability. Through analyses of forecast system output and satellite soil moisture retrievals, we have found significant connections between streamflow forecast skill and initial soil moisture state at weather-scale, subseasonal, and seasonal leads. At weather timescales, this skill depends strongly on how the forecast precipitation is processed.
The seminar's speaker, Randal Koster, is retired from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office of NASA/GSFC, where he spent decades examining predictability associated with land surface processes. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, and he has just been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
About the Seminar Series
This event is part of the NOAA Drought Seminar Series, a collaborative effort between NOAA Research's Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL), the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), and the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center. The series aims to enhance NOAA's capability to monitor, predict, and understand drought behavior. Drought is a key part of NOAA Research's science priorities aimed at confronting the challenges of a changing planet. It is also a key focus of National Weather Service operational forecast products and services, supporting stakeholder decision-making and reducing drought-related costs and impacts.
Each session will feature a speaker presentation, a question and answer period with the presenter, and general updates on activities within the drought science and services community. Individual session information, including connection details, is available on the NOAA Drought Seminar Series page. These seminars will be recorded.
PSL and NIDIS are part of NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
For additional information, please contact Andy Hoell with NOAA Research's Physical Sciences Laboratory.
