Introduction
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) program was authorized by Congress in 2006 (Public Law 109-430) with an interagency mandate to coordinate and integrate drought research, building upon existing federal, tribal, state, and local partnerships in support of creating a national drought early warning information system. A Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) utilizes new and existing partner networks to optimize the expertise of a wide range of federal, tribal, state, local and academic partners in order to make climate and drought science readily available, easily understandable and usable for decision makers; and to improve the capacity of stakeholders to better monitor, forecast, plan for and cope with the impacts of drought.NIDIS’ goal is to improve the nation’s capacity to manage drought-related risks by providing the best available information and tools to assess the potential impacts of drought, and to prepare for and mitigate the effects of drought. Toward that end, NIDIS seeks to create a DEWS for the nation.
