Predicting Present and Future Drought
Abstract

Abstract Author: Stefan Niemeyer, Blaz, Kurnik, Giovanni Laguardia

Abstract Title: Drought Forecasting in Europe using Monthly Forecast Products of ECMWF

Abstract: Opposite to most other natural hazards droughts occur on much longer time scales of typically several months to seasons and years. Accordingly, forecasting droughts needs to comprise this time scale, too. While the skill of seasonal forecasts for Europe is rather low due to a weak coupling of European climate with large scale phenomena such as ENSO, progress has been made during the last years in the development of medium-range (up to 14 days) and monthly forecast products at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF). Currently, the Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) of ECMWF produces a set of 50 ensembles, daily on the medium-range and weekly on the monthly scale.
We are investigating the use of monthly forecasts for drought forecasting in Europe. One the one hand, monthly forecasting precipitation is incorporated to produce monthly forecasted SPI-3. On the other hand, monthly forecasts are used to force a hydrological model to produce monthly forecasts of the soil moisture development in Europe.
First results of both approached will be presented, together with information on the uncertainty as derived from the ensemble products.