The Drought Monitor is "a synthesis of multiple indices, outlooks and news accounts, that represents a consensus of federal and academic scientists." The National Drought Mitigation Center offers drought maps of current conditions, short-term and long-term drought indicators, and animations of the United States. Land managers can view climate outlook maps for about the next 12 months. Researchers...

NASA has unveiled its new Multi-Spectral Drought Indexer (MSDI), improving existing technology for measuring absorption and reflection of sunlight by plants in order to make maps of unprecedented detail. The data, which come from satellites, are translated by researchers into monthly maps of vegetation color changes, thus indicating how much soil moisture is available to plants. The existing...

The NOAA Paleoclimatology Program is responsible for this excellent resource on Drought in North America, described within a geological timescale. Specifically, the Website aims "to explain how paleoclimatic data can provide information about past droughts and about the natural variability of drought over timescales of decades to millennia." The site is organized into four main sections: The...