Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) gridded precipitation data were used to generate SPI data.

NOAA's Center for Satellite Applications and Research produces satellite-based global vegetation health products, including the vegetation health index (VHI). The Vegetation Health Index is a proxy characterizing vegetation health or a combined estimation of moisture and thermal conditions. Vegetation health is used often to estimate crop condition and anticipated yield. If the indices are below 40 indicating different level of vegetation stress, losses of crop and pasture production might be expected; if the indices above 60 (favorable condition) plentiful production might be expected. Vegetation health is very useful for an advanced prediction of crop losses.

Vegetation Health Index data from NOAA's Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) were available in raster format.

Soil moisture data from GRACE were available in GeoTIFF format. The Drought.gov team used GIS software to create the map tiles used on Drought.gov. GRACE soil moisture maps are available at nasagrace.unl.edu through a partnership between NASA and the National Drought Mitigation Center.

Product description: "Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center generate groundwater and soil moisture drought indicators each week. They are based on terrestrial water storage observations derived from GRACE-FO satellite data and integrated with other observations, using a sophisticated numerical model of land surface water and energy processes. The drought indicators describe current wet or dry conditions, expressed as a percentile showing the probability of occurrence for that particular location and time of year, with lower values (warm colors) meaning dryer than normal, and higher values (blues) meaning wetter than normal. These are provided as both images and binary data files."