A drought monitor for Australia

The UniSQ Drought Monitor and Australian Combined Drought Indicator (CDI) are introduced. The objective of these products is to use a multi-index approach to fully capture the long-and short-term consequences of drought as an information service for the public. Since drought is a complex phenomenon relying on multiple variables such as rainfall evaporative demand, and antecedent soil moisture conditions, monitoring drought using a single index or indicator is not always appropriate.The Drought Monitor was developed using a normalized linear combination with weighting determined by PCA. It was evaluated against observed wheat yield as well as total pasture growth simulated by the Aussie-GRASS model. The results indicate that there was a significant positive correlation with both. The Drought Monitor was also well-received by survey respondents and has the potential to become a valuable drought monitoring tool for identifying drought impacts and related risks.