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The Western Water Assessment recently released a short informational report describing the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI). EDDI is a drought index that can serve as an indicator of both rapidly evolving “flash” droughts (developing over a few weeks) and sustained droughts (developing over months but lasting up to years).

The impetus for this 2-page report came out of the October 2015 “all hands” workshop and webinar at Wind River Reservation where the technical assessment collaborative teams reported on the science teams’ activities to tribal water managers. It included a “ground truthing” exercise to see how the EDDI aligned with the Wind River experience during the 2015 irrigation season. It was well aligned, more so at that local scale than the US Drought Monitor. It was in those discussions with the water managers about the EDDI that the idea for this 2-pager was born.

In this report, the team evaluated the relevance of EDDI as an appropriate and effective drought indicator tool; in particular, for early drought warning and capturing signals of rapidly evolving drought conditions.  In collaboration with the National Drought Mitigation Center and NIDIS (National Integrated Drought Information System), the team plans to foster development of EDDI datasets and maps for North Central Climate Science Center (NCCSC) funded projects (e.g., Wind River Project) and stakeholders, in general. The purpose of this report is to inform a broad user group about the significance of EDDI. This report is sponsored in part by the NCCSC's Foundational Science activities.

For more information, please contact Mike Hobbins, mike.hobbins@noaa.gov.