New research confirms the role of citizen science contributions to drought detection and monitoring

A sunset illuminates a rain gauge. Credit: Drought.gov

To address needs for better understanding and monitoring of localized drought impacts, a recently completed project recruited volunteers from the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network to report on how weather and recent precipitation affected their local environments and communities. The project found that the reporting of conditions across a wet-to-dry scale by the CoCoRaHS volunteers reflects meteorological conditions, and provides on-the-ground details that are being incorporated into existing drought monitoring processes. The project was led by researchers from the Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments (CISA), a NOAA RISA team, and the State Climate Office of North Carolina, with funding from NIDIS and the NOAA RISA program. This research was recently published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).

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