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NOAA Drought Seminar Series
The NOAA Drought Seminar Series is a recurring monthly event dedicated to drought monitoring, prediction, and predictability. The seminar's primary objective is to establish a focused platform where national drought research, operational, and user communities can exchange the latest tools, research findings, and risk reduction activities.
A collaborative effort between NOAA Research's Physical Sciences Laboratory, the National Integrated Drought Information System, and the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center, this series aims to enhance NOAA's capability to monitor, predict, and understand drought behavior.
Drought is a key part of NOAA Research's science priorities aimed at confronting the challenges of a changing planet. It also is a key focus of National Weather Service operational forecast products and services, supporting stakeholder decision-making and reducing drought-related costs and impacts.
Each session will feature a speaker presentation, a question and answer period with the presenter, and general updates on activities within the drought science and services community.
The NOAA Drought Seminar series is generally held on the first or second Monday of each month at 1pm Eastern Time (UTC -4). Days and times may differ pending speaker availability.
Next seminar
Abstract
This seminar will be in two parts, covering two somewhat independent topics. The first part addresses the causes of flash drought, using reanalysis data to quantify the relative impacts of evapotranspiration and precipitation anomalies on their development. Key to the analysis is an innovative approach for characterizing evapotranspiration’s role in producing flash droughts through consideration of its connection to soil moisture state. The second part of the seminar addresses hydrological drought through an analysis of streamflow predictability. Through analyses of forecast system output and satellite soil moisture retrievals, we have found significant connections between streamflow forecast skill and initial soil moisture state at weather-scale, subseasonal, and seasonal leads. At weather timescales, this skill depends strongly on how the forecast precipitation is processed.
Biography
Randal Koster is retired from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he spent decades examining predictability associated with land surface processes. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, and he has just been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Upcoming Schedule
The following are the planned drought seminars. Times, dates, and presenters subject to change.
| Date/Time | Presenter | Affiliation | Presentation Topic/Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 16, 2026 • 1pm ET | Randal Koster | NASA/GSFC Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, Retired | Flash Drought and Hydrological Prediction |
Past seminars
| Date | Presenter | Affiliation | Presentation Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| November 9, 2026 | John Nielsen-Gammon | Texas A&M University • Texas State Climatologist | El Niño and drought in the U.S. Southern Region Recording |
| October 19, 2026 | Amir AghaKouchak | University of California, Irvine | From Hazards to Consequences: Toward Impact-Based Drought Monitoring and Prediction Recording |
| September 28, 2026 | Michael Anderson | State of California - Department of Water Resources | Drought, El Niño, and California Recording |
| August 10, 2026 | Tim Brown | Desert Research Institute; Western Regional Climate Center | Exploring Drought and Wildfire Recording |
| July 13, 2026 | Jeffrey Basara | Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at University of Massachusetts Lowell | The Ever-Present and Growing Threat of Flash Drought in an Accelerating Hydroclimate Recording |
| June 8, 2026 | Dan McEvoy | Desert Research Institute and Western Regional Climate Center | Progress and Challenges on Understanding Snow Droughts in the Western United States. Recording |
| May 11, 2026 | Jon Gottschalck | Operational Prediction Branch, NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC) | CPC operational drought services: Overview of monitoring and prediction products, outlook
verification, Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS) activities and ongoing developmental
efforts. Recording |
| April 13, 2026 | Richard Seager | Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University | Pathways of ongoing aridification in southwest North America: Linkages across seasons in the
ocean-atmosphere-land system. Recording |
- Seminar Organizers
- Andrew Hoell, Research Meteorologist, NOAA/OAR Physical Sciences Laboratory
- Hailan Wang, Meteorologist, NOAA National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center
- Veva Deheza, Executive Director, NOAA/OAR/CPO National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS)
