Dr. Hoell presented on: Flash Drought
Flash Droughts are defined as an event with greater than or equal to two categories degradation in a four-week period based on the U.S. Drought Monitor.
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About the Presenter
Andy Hoell works in NOAA's Physical Sciences Laboratory. He researches the predictability of weather and climate at regional to continental scales, including assessments of individual extreme events like droughts and floods and their generality.
Andy is a 2019 recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Additional Learning Resources
- Read this Drought.gov article that discusses Dr. Hoell's research into flash droughts.
- Explore the Drought in the Colorado Basin series of data visualizations, part of the CLEAN Collection, that shows the 16-year drought as of 2016 and its effects on the Colorado River Basin.
- Explore the U.S. Drought Monitor to discover current and historic drought conditions.
Middle and High School: CIRES' HEART Force program has created an entire curriculum on natural hazard resilience, with drought as one of the foci. Recommended activities:
- Middle School Colorado Drought Lesson: Activity 2 is meant to be run as a jigsaw, but students could dive into any of the stations using pages 3-9 of the Drought MS Student Handout, available as a google doc and pdf, found under the Teaching Materials section.
- High School Colorado Drought Lesson: In this lesson, students become drought monitor scientists, and are challenged to assess factors that contribute to drought and identify drought conditions. Students also investigate drought resilience strategies.
High School: In this EarthLab's Lab on drought, When Precipitation Patterns Change, students develop a definition of drought and set up a hands-on demonstration to understand the role of soil moisture in drought.
