Public Asked to Submit Drought Information

Jul 13, 2018

By Patrick Guinan

The public is invited to submit information to help local, state and national decision-makers assess drought conditions and impacts in Missouri.

You may submit information about conditions in your area to the Missouri Extension Drought Impact Reporter at arcg.is/1f95Pi(opens in new window), said Pat Guinan, University of Missouri Extension climatologist. Guinan worked with the National Drought Mitigation Center and the National Integrated Drought Information System to develop the website.

“This site will be very helpful when it comes to assessing drought conditions and compiling impact reports at the local, county and state level,” he said.

Information provided by users is shared with the national Drought Impact Reporter (droughtreporter.unl.edu(opens in new window)), the nation’s first comprehensive database of drought impacts.

Input from Missourians helps decision-makers gain a more complete and accurate portrayal of drought conditions affecting the Show-Me State, Guinan said.

A related resources is the U.S. Drought Monitor at droughtmonitor.unl.edu(opens in new window), a weekly map that shows the location and intensity of drought in the U.S. The map is based on measurements of climatic, hydrologic and soil conditions as well as reported impacts and observations from hundreds of contributors across the country, including people who contribute to the Drought Impact Reporter.

Drought Monitor authors assess the data and use their best judgment to create the weekly drought map. Drought reports are available to the public and archived for future use.

“I encourage your participation,” Guinan said. “Nobody knows a drought and its impacts better than a person living in it does. Your local input and expertise is valued and will provide additional information for the author to consider when assessing Missouri drought conditions and categories.”

The Missouri Extension Drought Impact Reporter allows contributors to upload image files up to 10 MB in size. “Pictures are extremely helpful for map authors when assessing drought at the local level,” he said.

You can subscribe to the Drought Impact Reporter RSS feed at moderator.droughtreporter.unl.edu/rssfeed/(opens in new window). Add the two-letter postal abbreviation at the end of the URL to receive a feed for a specific state. For example, the feed for Missouri is at moderator.droughtreporter.unl.edu/rssfeed/MO(opens in new window).

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency provide funds for the Drought Impact Reporter.

Source: missouri.edu

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.