Innovative global drought monitoring and early warning for robust drought risk management

Drought monitoring systems are able to show the current state of a drought hazard and how it develops over time. In some situations, it is also possible to anticipate the climate conditions with seasonal forecasts based on the sea surface temperatures. Facing the growing sense of urgency for some countries to be equipped with such systems, as a key element towards implementing pro-active national drought plans, the UNCCD launched an interactive Drought Toolbox in September 2019 that serves as a platform to provide drought stakeholders with easy access to tools, case studies and other resources. The overall goal is to support member states in the implementation of national drought plans to boost the resilience of people and ecosystems against droughts. To bridge the hazard detection with the action to be taken, the toolbox is built around the three pillars of the drought risk management, and it includes the tools for monitoring and early warning (Pillar 1), risk and vulnerability assessment options (Pillar 2) and practical risk mitigation measures or tools (Pillar 3). This paper focuses on pillar 1: Drought early Warning and monitoring tools. Within this context a global monitoring tool has been developed in partnership with UNEP-DHI and it provides access to near real-time freely available data for drought monitoring and forecasting. The web-based tool aims at providing access to a wide range of datasets and drought indicators and indices to all member states. It provides access to precipitation, soil moisture and vegetation datasets as well as derived indices and indicators. The tool gives spatial and temporal information about the drought hazard that is currently evolving in the countries. In addition, it allows the user to revisit past events and thus better understand how the drought events unfolded and could have been anticipated. This global drought early warning and monitoring system is a powerful tool to raise awareness for policy makers and water managers about the importance of implementing better and more robust tools at a national and regional levels.