1. Monitoring Global Droughts from Space Zhong Liu 1,4, W.L. Teng 2,4, S. Kempler 4, H. Rui 3,4, G. Leptoukh 4, and E. Ocampo 3,4 1 George Mason University, 2 RS Information Systems, Inc., 3 ADNET Systems, Inc., 4 NASA/GSFC, NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data & Information Services Center (DISC), Code 610.2, NASA/GSFC, Maryland 20771, USA Precipitation Data and Information Services Center Web Portal http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/precipitation/index.shtml Precipitation Data Products http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/precipitation/data_access.shtml TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS) http://disc2.nascom.nasa.gov/Giovanni/tovas/ TOVAS: http://disc2.nascom.nasa.gov/Giovanni/tovas/ AOVAS: http://agdisc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Giovanni/aovas/ Other Tools: http://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov TRMM Products: http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/datapool/TRMM/ Details about TRMM: http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov Questions and comments: hydrology-disc@listserv.gsfc.nasa.gov Research products and archives are important for case studies. Near-real-time products are important for monitoring activities. Times series plot for southern Mozambique showing a decreasing trend in rainfall in recent years (top). ASCII output can be used for further analysis (bottom). Hovmoller diagram (top) for central Mozambique showing spatial and temporal distribution in rainfall. Animation (bottom) shows the time evolution. INTRODUCTION Drought events happen every year around the world. Severe and prolonged droughts could cause heavy damages on agriculture food production and affect people's daily life. Dry conditions could create fuels for wild fires. Monitoring droughts can be a challenging task, especially in data sparse regions. Data from satellite observations provide additional important information in those regions. This poster will describe services provided by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) to support global drought monitoring activities. The services consist of two parts, maps and tools. All maps (URL: http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/agriculture/ais_sup/current_co nditions.shtml) are derived from the Experimental Near- Real-Time TRMM Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA or 3B42RT). There are three types of maps, accumulated rainfall, rainfall anomaly and percent of normal rainfall for past 3 hours, 24 hours, 10 days, 30 days, 60 days and 90 days, respectively (Note: no anomaly and percent of normal maps for 3 hours and 24 hours). There are 16 global and regional maps, updated daily, for each of the past conditions. The daily climatology was derived from the 3-hourly TRMM and Others Rainfall Estimate (3B42 V6) between 1998 and 2005. These maps provide a convenient way to monitor global droughts, without data downloading, processing and maintenance. The tools are provided by the TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS, URL: http://disc2.nascom.nasa.gov/Giovanni/tovas/) and the Agriculture Online Visualization and Analysis System (AOVAS, URL: http://agdisc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Giovanni/aovas/). Advanced users could use TOVAS and AOVAS to do customized rainfall analysis and visualization tasks including data outputs for other applications. Monitoring Global Droughts http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/agriculture/ais_sup/current_conditions.shtml Daily generated maps allow a fast and easy access to latest global drought information. Different regions are listed in tables (far left) and users can display accumulated rainfall, anomaly and percent of normal (10-day, 30-day, 60-day and 90-day). More monitoring map products are underway. The latest 90-day percent of normal map shows the droughts continue in South Texas (far left). The latest U.S. Drought Monitor map (left) shows the corresponding drought areas. PDISC Portal Tool page contains various tools for reading and processing precipitation data Most Popular Products:  Multi-Satellite 3-hourly rainfall (3B42RT, 2002 - present)  TRMM 3-hourly rainfall (3B42, 1998 - present)  TRMM monthly rainfall (3B43, 1998 - present)  Derived rainfall (daily, 10-day, 1998 - present)  Willmott monthly historical rainfall (station data, 1950 - 1999)  GPCC monthly historical rainfall (station data, 1986 - present) All these products are available in TOVAS now. Other Similar Tools at GES DISC: http://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov http://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov Data products page List of data products ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The Agricultural Online Visualization and Analysis System is part of the NASA Data Integration into Global Agricultural Decision Support Systems Project supported by NASA HQ through REASoN CAN 02-OES_01. The Project PI is Steven Kempler (NASA GSFC). Agriculture Online Visualization and Analysis System (AOVAS) http://agdisc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Giovanni/aovas/ AOVAS allows accessing both operational and research 10-day rainfall data Web interface for the operational 10-day rainfall product Sample output for the 10-day operational rainfall product Email: Zhong.Liu@nasa.gov