Drought is a complex hazard measured mostly by its effects on agriculture and water resources. Droughts can be costly and are heavily influenced by climate change, so they are expected to become more frequent in the future. For information on past, present, and future droughts, look to ISWS as a top resource, providing expertise, maps, and tools.
Drought conditions monitoring
Illinois State Climatologist
Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford plays a critical role in monitoring drought conditions throughout Illinois, researching droughts, and informing many sectors of society about drought-related issues. Ford leads the state’s drought monitoring team, which includes National Weather Service offices, Extension, federal and state agencies, and academics. This team assesses conditions and provides weekly recommendations to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which is a weekly map that shows the intensity of drought conditions across the country. These assessments help the team keep track of current conditions and help with decisions on when and how to act when drought occurs.
Resources available through the Illinois State Climatologist Office website include drought information and Illinois maps showing the current drought conditions.
Water and Atmospheric Resources Monitoring (WARM) Program
The WARM Program collects data on soil temperatures and moisture at hourly intervals through Illinois Climate Network stations across the state. The agriculture industry and national organizations use the data for research, long-term planning, and program support.
WARM data is available on the WARM website.
Research projects
Urban drought in Illinois
During a drought, tree health can decline quickly. Trees are particularly important in urban areas where they help decrease urban heat for residents. Trent Ford and colleagues are working with Argonne National Laboratory and the Morton Arboretum to develop a multi-tiered tree-response early-warning system for communities to reduce drought effects and create guidelines for tree selection and planting strategies based on climate projections. This project will add significant knowledge and resources to address the lack of drought early warning and monitoring infrastructure for cities.
Flash drought
Flash droughts are not a new phenomenon, but new drought-monitoring tools are better attuned to the fast onset of dry conditions and intensifying impacts. In the past few years, scientists have begun examining flash droughts to learn more about the climatic, atmospheric, and environmental conditions that affect them.
In one ISWS project, researchers are developing a flash drought intensity index used to identify flash drought events and categorize their severity. This important advancement for flash drought monitoring and research provides a more complete measure of drought severity than existing methods. The research and resources will lead to new insight into the characteristics of flash drought, enhancing our ability to detect their onset, determine their severity, and monitor their impacts.
Ford has also studied how vegetation responds to drought and the interaction of vegetation, land, and the atmosphere in extreme droughts and how flash drought indicators can be used to inform flash drought response and management. Hydrologist Zhenxing Zhang has studied the rapid shifts between droughts and floods.