The United Nations has documented that drought frequency and duration have increased globally since 2000. According to this report 2.3 billion people around the world are currently facing water stress. Although droughts only represent 15% of natural disasters, they killed 650,000 people between 1970 and 2019. Also, it is predicted that by 2050, drought could affect more than 75% of the world’s population. Droughts affect drinking water availability, ecosystems, and crop production – critical for quality and sustainability of plant, animal, and human lives. For better water and agricultural management, it is crucial to monitor and forecast drought conditions.
This four-part advanced training will build upon previous ARSET trainings and provide hands-on data analysis exercises for monitoring different types of drought (meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural). Moreover, the training will include drought prediction analysis on sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) time scales and climate change projection analysis of drought conditions.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this training attendees will be able to:
- Identify important Earth Observations and tools for assessing short term (week to month) to long-term (seasonal to multi-decadal) drought conditions.
- Identify drought portals and relevant geophysical parameters for monitoring droughts globally and regionally.
- Access and analyze sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts of temperature and precipitation for evolving drought conditions for a region of interest.
- Access and analyze climate change projection data to assess impacts on long term drought conditions for a region of interest.
- Explore selected regional drought monitoring tools that can be customized for a user’s region of interest.
Time: 10:00-12:00 or 14:00-16:00 EDT (UTC-4); There will be identical sessions at two different times of the day. Participants need only to register and attend one daily session.
To Register: https://go.nasa.gov/3Vc5LMy
Audience: This training is primarily intended for water resources and disaster managers and planners from local, state, federal, and international organizations interested in using remote sensing to monitor drought.
Relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals:
- Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
- Target 2.4: By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality
- Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
- Target 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries