Drought Workshop
Asheville, NC
April 25-27, 2002
Agenda

Agenda Items:

• determine action items (who needs to do what by when)
• determine requirements for report
  • parameters to compute (Palmer Index, SPI, other)
  • requirements for any other drought indices desired (e.g., incorporating snow or computed on daily basis)
  • data (temperature, precipitation) and auxiliary data (Palmer parameters) needed to compute these parameters across North America
  • procedure to collecting the data (what, who, where data come from, push/pull data, when it is needed)
  • decide: central location for data collection and computation of parameters, or each country compute separately?
  • determine spatial units: compute by climate division or by station?
  • will local review & input play a role (a la U.S. Drought Monitor)? If yes, need a contact list of local experts in all 3 countries.
• set next meeting and report deadline
  • October 2002 - working group meeting to draft text (outline) of report, decide meeting dates & where
  • November 2002 - finish fully integrated 2001 North America drought status report

(see above for Agenda Items)

• Resolve difference between weekly and monthly Palmer Index
• Resolve issue of consistency/agreement in calculation of the SPI (Pearson III vs Gamma)
• SPI weekly link to UCAN stations (http://rcf.unl.edu:8015/~dgov/)

• Clarify the protocol for responding to inquiries to the Drought Monitor authors. Who will answer these inquiries? Should this be the job of the back-up author each week? Should all authors see the questions, or just the author and back-up?
• Clarify the timing of the final draft, the "near final", and the "final, final" DM maps. Make sure that all authors are on the same page as to when Kim and Deb need these maps and when they will be posted. For example, if a map is changed early Thursday morning, it may have to be re-posted to the web site if Kim and Deb have already done the preparation and posting for that week.
• Clarify the listserve web site and emphasize that the authors themselves can point new members to the listserve to join.
• Creation of a vision-impaired friendly version of the DM website.
• Creation of a vision-impaired friendly version of the DM map.
• How to successfully deal with the voluminous weekly email.

• Identify issues relevant to drought monitoring in the western U.S. (e.g., the use of reservoir data & SWSI) to bring up for discussion at the Portland, OR May drought gathering
• Identify issues relevant to drought monitoring in the southwestern U.S. (e.g., when does a desert have drought?) to bring up for discussion at a future drought gathering in the Southwest

• "Do we lead in the political decision process or follow?"
• Computation of the percent area in the Drought Monitor categories and other GIS matters
• Terminology (should D1 be called "First Level Drought" or just plain "Drought" instead of "Moderate Drought"?)

• Labeling, Interpretation, & Consistency. Examples:
• Can there be a D0 (W), (A), or (F)?
• D3(W) - does it imply no D1 or D2 Ag or Fire?
• If an area is D3(F), is it automatically D2(A,W) unless stated otherwise?
• If an area is D3(W), but also D0(A,F), should it be labeled D3(W) or an average D2(W)? (In other words: If an area has different severities of short- & long-term drought, do we show the most severe of these on the map or an "average"?)
• When is a drought really over? When the blended indicators say so? When some of the indicators say so? When all of the indicators say so?

• Do we need two separate Drought Monitor maps (a weekly map for short-term drought & a monthly map for long-term drought)? More than two maps?
• If depicting short- & long-term drought on one map: Again, do we average the two blends of indicators, or show the worst of the two on the one map?