Drought Research and Outreach at CIG

1. Drought Research and Outreach at CIG Andy Wood Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Land Surface Hydrology Research Group Phil Mote, Amy Snover Climate Impacts Group Center for Science in the Earth System 2007 RISA PIs Meeting San Diego, CA February 2007

2. Current drought research and activities CIG’s drought-relevant work falls into 3 main categories: • Outreach activities – “meetings / collaboration” • Information resources – “datasets” • Monitoring and prediction methods – “tools”

3. Outreach Activities CIG: an established provider of information about climate variability and climate change • regular fall meetings on implications of current and future climate for water, fish, forests, energy, … • in times of drought, e.g., 2001, 2005, additional spring meetings facilitate interactions between: • university researchers • agencies • the public • media • climate information user community • assist state-level drought responses

4. Outreach Activities CIG’s Anne Steinemann is currently investigating drought impacts in collaboration with the State of Washington Focusing on four aspects of drought in Washington State • Impacts, vulnerability, indicators, and responses Expert advisory panel • WA Department of Community Trade and Economic Development • WA Department of Ecology, Department of Agriculture • WA Office of Financial Management • Washington State University Interviewed representatives (over 60) from many sectors • Agriculture, Municipal suppliers, Fisheries, Power, Recreation

5. Information Resources CIG has produced long term, gridded 1/8 degree climate & hydrology datasets for the PNW • mined by UW and other researchers to improve understanding of climate and hydrologic extremes • e.g., trend work of Hamlet, Mote and others • data staged online for user access and analysis Note: state climatology role of CIG principal (Mote) helps in connecting CIG datasets to public

6. Monitoring and Prediction Methods At UW, CIG is linking to drought-relevant research supported by non-RISA NOAA programs: • UW Land Surface Hydrology Research Group • West-wide flow forecast system (CDEP, CPPA) • Surface Water Monitor (TRACS, hopefully!) • Hydrologic Prediction System for WA State (SARP) • Drought characterization work (Andreadis et al., 2005), drought trends analysis (Andreadis & Letten., 2006) Central question: How will models (land surface / climate / coupled) become integrated into drought management? • “nowcasting”, forecasting? • retrospective diagnosis? • attribution / detection?

7. UW Real-time Daily Nowcast SM, SWE (RO) ½ degree VIC implementation Mostly free running since May 2005 “Browsable” Archive, 1915-present No forecasting just yet…

8. Surface Water Monitor archive (1915-current) June 1934 Aug 1993

9. Monitoring and Prediction Methods drought onset / recovery prediction?

10. WA State Monitoring and Prediction Methods soil moisture SWE

11. Future drought research and activities • Outreach • continue annual water-focused outlook meetings • stakeholder workshop on observations and watershed monitoring • expanded drought impacts assessment: • Interviewing drought coordinators from western states • improving Washington State drought preparedness • Datasets • creating finer resolution (1/16th degree) long-term hydrologic assessment datasets for PNW (in concert with WA state) • with WA state, evaluating temperature sensitivity of river basins • Tools • working with WWA/CPC to add medium-range prediction to regional hydrologic assessment tools, western WA pilot case • hosting workshop at CPASW with K. Jacobs focusing on decadal prediction – “state of science”