Improving Early Warning of Drought in Australia

Abstract

This invited review outlines a selection of recent technical and communication advances, in certain areas of climate and weather science that could improve the capability and utility of drought early warning systems in Australia. First, a selection of current operational outputs and their significance for drought early warning is reviewed, then a selection of advancements in the Research and Development (R&D) pipeline are considered, which have potential to help enable better decision-making by stakeholders subject to drought risk. The next generation of drought early warning systems should have a focus on index-and impact-based prediction models that go beyond basic weather and climate parameters, at seasonal through to multi-year timescales. Convergence and integration of emerging research, science and technology is called for across the fields of cli-mate, agronomy, environment, economics and social science, to improve early warning information. The enablement of more predictively based drought policy, should facilitate more proactive re-sponses by stakeholders throughout the agricultural value chain, and should make stakeholders more drought resilient.