Drought

Excerpt from article by Giriraj Amarnath, IWMI

Experts at COP 27 have made apocalyptic forecasts of weather under climate change if urgent action is not taken. In South Asia, the anticipated ‘climate chaos’ is already a reality for many, with extreme droughts and floods increasingly affecting the region. According to the World Bank, losses will average USD 160 billion per year by the end of this decade if current trends continue. If South Asian nations and communities are to cope as climate change progresses, they need advance warning of extreme events, so they can put mitigation plans into action, and avoid climate hazards becoming major disasters.…

The event was organised by the SAARC Disaster Management Centre with support from the UN-SPIDER programme of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs and International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one of the 26 regional support offices of UN-SPIDER, and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. The workshop was attended by over 25 participants from Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Drought is one of the most devastating natural disasters in the world. South Asia has faced several droughts in recent decades and 50 major droughts reported Since 1990 and affecting a population of over 750 million and economic damages estimated at 7 billion USD. Droughts are projected to be more frequent and prolonged in the arid and semiarid areas of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Being able to accurately identify and monitor drought is therefore of considerable importance. Thus, monitoring the severity and its impact on drought is critical for drought risk…

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre today published the “Drought in Europe - July 2022” report, an assessment of Europe’s drought situation based on the European Drought Observatory.

The analysis of the evolution and impact of the prolonged drought in the EU shows that a staggering portion of Europe is currently exposed to warning (44% of EU+UK) and alert (9% of EU+UK) drought levels, associated with soil moisture deficit in combination with vegetation stress.

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The Joint Research Centre produces real-time drought information through the European and Global Drought Observatories (EDO and GDO), which are part of the…

In June and July 2022, heatwaves struck Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, as temperatures climbed above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in places and broke many long-standing records.

The map above shows the surface air temperatures across most of the Eastern Hemisphere on July 13, 2022. It was produced by combining observations with a version of the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) global model, which uses mathematical equations to represent physical processes in the atmosphere.

“While there is a clear pattern of an ‘atmospheric wave’ with alternating warm (redder) and cool (bluer) values in different locations, this large area of extreme (and record breaking) heat is another clear indicator that emissions of greenhouse gases by human activity are causing weather extremes that impact our living conditions,” said Steven…

Text adapted from https://eo-college.org

Welcome to the ‘Hazards and Disasters’ online courses. In the three MOOCs which are part of it, we will take a closer look at how remote sensing can answer essential questions related to the emergency response that is needed during hazardous events. Thus, disaster management heavily relies on remotely sensed data and their prompt processing in order to support decisions that can a) estimate the extent of a (natural) disaster and b) save lives by scientifically justifiable choices.

In the three lessons of this course, we will present different applications of remotely sensed data for disaster monitoring to you. At first, we will take a look at droughts, then dive into mapping flood extents using an interactive cloud-based approach before ending our course with the monitoring of fire hazards.

In the lessons listed below, you will be doing the…

Implementing science to save lives: A Decade of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service

The Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) celebrates a decade of operation as a world leader in emergency mapping, early warning tools and open-access disaster information.

For the past ten years, CEMS has provided a global service as a fully operation emergency mapping service at no cost to users and with open access data.

Some highlights on the contribution of CEMS in global disaster risk management activities:

• 576 Rapid Mapping Activations with 5,500+ maps delivered
• Designed and implemented the world’s first Global Flood Monitoring tool
• Ten years of wildfire forecasts up to ten days into the future
• Average of 200+ flood and 500+ flash flood notifications to Member States and authorised users each year
• Offers a current and historical database of 7,000+ drought episodes since 1950

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Extensive time-series on vegetation and wealth of operational satellites from space provides ample opportunities to monitor vegetation developments and more and more accurate yield forecast. This MOOC provides an introduction to “Droughts”, answers questions on how it can be quantified, how it can be assessed and monitored from space. The role of cloud computing and (easy) access to satellite will also get attention. No prior knowledge to Earth Observation (EO) is required. The MOOC provides a ‘smooth’ introduction for agricultural scientist, water resources specialist and others who are interested in water and food security and the role EO plays nowadays related to this theme. Every week a new set of movie and short quizzes will be released. The MOOC will be open till the end of November 2022.

Find more information here.

UN-SPIDER's Regional Support Office of Pakistan (SUPARCO) has provided a new Recommended Practice, using Google Earth Engine to identify the drought extent and severity by calculating different indices.

Drought is a slow on-set disaster which affects agriculture and associated livelihood in many parts of the world. It causes stress to vegetation; hence the extent of a drought can be reflected by changes in the vegetation condition. Geospatial scientists have developed drought indices based on remote sensing data to effectively detect drought conditions.

Droughts make considerable effects on agricultural and agro-pastoral areas due to their substantial dependency on rainfall. Agricultural drought monitoring is very important to maintain food security in the world. Satellite remote sensing is widely used for vegetation health monitoring and has become a powerful…