Executive Summary
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2026 report, Improving Future U.S. Drought Assessment, calls for a new national drought assessment framework that accounts for nonstationarity—the fact that drought frequency, severity, duration, onset, intensification, and impacts are changing over time. The report recommends a two-pronged approach: one track for short-term operational decisions, such as monitoring, early warning, emergency response, and relief, and another for long-term planning decisions, such as water management, infrastructure, insurance, adaptation, and resilience.
The Key Development
The report says traditional drought assessment methods are becoming less reliable because many rely on historical climate baselines that assume past conditions remain a useful guide to present and future risk. That assumption is weakening as climate change, aridification, warming-driven increases in atmospheric moisture demand, land-use change, water management, and flash-drought dynamics alter drought behavior across the United States.
The Recommended Shift
For short-term drought assessment, the report recommends using updated contemporary baselines, such as 30 years ± 10 years, tailored to the application and decision context. For long-term planning, it recommends explicit nonstationary methods that use the full observational record, model-based predictions and projections, evolving statistical parameters, and physically meaningful covariates, including temperature, water demand, land use, and land cover.
The Data And Governance Implications
The National Academies also calls for stronger drought-monitoring infrastructure, including stream gauges, soil-moisture networks, snowpack measurements, weather stations, and Earth-observing satellites. It recommends a more systematic national collection of drought-impact data across agriculture, water supplies, ecosystems, public health, livelihoods, and local communities, along with clearer documentation, versioning, uncertainty communication, and baseline-selection rules.
The Bottom Line
The report’s central message is that U.S. drought assessment must shift from static historical comparisons to decision-specific Climate Risk Intelligence™ that reflects changing climate conditions, sector-specific impacts, and varying time horizons. The practical takeaway for agencies, water managers, infrastructure planners, insurers, and communities is clear: drought monitoring and planning now require different methods, baselines, and stronger governance. (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2026)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- What is nonstationary drought assessment? Nonstationary drought assessment is an approach that recognizes that drought risk changes over time. Instead of assuming historical drought patterns remain stable, it accounts for shifting climate conditions, warming, aridification, land-use change, water demand, and evolving drought impacts.
- Why are traditional drought baselines becoming less reliable? Traditional drought baselines often rely on historical climate records that assume past conditions are a useful guide to current and future risk. As drought frequency, severity, duration, onset, and impacts change, static historical comparisons can understate or misrepresent present and future drought risk.
- What does the National Academies recommend for short-term drought monitoring? For short-term operational decisions, the report recommends using updated contemporary baselines, such as roughly 30 years plus or minus 10 years, tailored to the decision context. These baselines can support monitoring, early warning, emergency response, and drought relief decisions.
- How should long-term drought planning change? Long-term drought planning should use explicit nonstationary methods that incorporate observations, models, projections, evolving statistical parameters, and physical drivers such as temperature, water demand, land use, and land cover. This helps agencies, utilities, insurers, and infrastructure planners assess future drought risk more realistically.
- Why does drought assessment require stronger data governance? Drought assessment depends on reliable monitoring networks, impact data, baseline-selection rules, versioning, uncertainty communication, and transparent documentation. Stronger data governance helps decision-makers understand what the data means, how it was produced, and how it should be used across sectors and time horizons.
(Source: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2026). Improving future U.S. drought assessment. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/29217.)
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