United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN) Drought Indices

The U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) was designed to monitor the climate of the United States using research quality instrumentation located within representative pristine environments. The USCRN hourly standardized soil moisture anomalies and percentiles were evaluated during changes in U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) status, with a focus on onset, worsening, and improving drought conditions. The purpose of this study was to explore timescales (i.e., 1 to 6 weeks) and soil moisture at individual (i.e., 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 cm) and aggregated layer (i.e., TOP and COLUMN) depths to determine their alignment with evolving drought conditions. Standardized measures of soil moisture were found to be useful in drought monitoring applications during these critical stages of drought formation and recovery. Indices based on weekly average standardized soil moisture and counts of hours below the 30th percentiles and above the 70th percentile were selected for use as drought indices, and they are provided daily for each layer in this dataset.

File names are structured at CRNDI0101-STATIONNAME.csv. DI stands for Drought Indices. The first two digits of the trailing integer indicate major version and the second two digits minor version of the product.