Drought Early Warning and Forecasting

Book excerpt: Drought risk management involves three pillars: drought early warning, drought vulnerability and risk assessment, and drought preparedness, mitigation, and response. This book collects in one place a description of all the key components of the first pillar, and describes strategies for fitting these pieces together. The best modern drought early warning systems incorporate and integrate a broad array of environmental information sources: weather station observations, satellite imagery, land surface and crop model simulations, and weather and climate model forecasts, and analyze this information in context-relevant ways that take into account exposure and vulnerability. Drought Early Warning and Forecasting: Theory and Practice assembles a comprehensive overview of these components, providing examples drawn from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network and the United States Drought Monitor. This book simultaneously addresses the physical, social, and information management aspects of drought early warning, and informs readers about the tools, techniques, and conceptual models required to effectively identify, predict, and communicate potential drought-related disasters. This book is a key text for postgraduate scientists and graduate and advanced undergraduate students in hydrology, geography, earth sciences, meteorology, climatology, and environmental sciences programs. Professionals dealing with disaster management and drought forecasting will also find this book beneficial to their work.