United States Drought Monitor

  • The U.S. Drought Monitor dataset provides weekly maps of drought conditions across the United States, categorized into five levels: abnormally dry (D0) and moderate (D1) to exceptional (D4) drought.

  • This dataset is freely available and jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center, NOAA, and USDA, covering the period from 2000 to 2024.

  • Drought classifications are provided at a 250-meter resolution and can be easily accessed and analyzed within Google Earth Engine.

  • The dataset is licensed under an Open data license for use and is part of the Awesome GEE Community Catalog.

  • Users can explore and visualize the data using the provided Earth Engine snippet and code editor example for a detailed analysis of drought patterns.
projects/sat-io/open-datasets/us-drought-monitor
info

This dataset is part of a Community Catalog, and not managed by Google Earth Engine. Contact gee-community-catalog@googlegroups.com for bugs or view more datasets from the Awesome GEE Community Catalog Catalog. Learn more about Community datasets.

Catalog Owner
Awesome GEE Community Catalog
Dataset Availability
2000-01-04T00:00:00Z–2025-09-23T00:00:00Z
Dataset Provider
Earth Engine Snippet
ee.ImageCollection("projects/sat-io/open-datasets/us-drought-monitor")
Tags
community-dataset drought noaa precipitation sat-io usda
ndmc

Description

The U.S. Drought Monitor is a map released every Thursday, showing parts of the U.S. that are in drought. The map uses five classifications: abnormally dry (D0), showing areas that may be going into or are coming out of drought, and four levels of drought: moderate (D1), severe (D2), extreme (D3) and exceptional (D4). The Drought Monitor has been a team effort since its inception in 1999, produced jointly by the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The NDMC hosts the web site of the drought monitor and the associated data, and provides the map and data to NOAA, USDA and other agencies. It is freely available at droughtmonitor.unl.edu.

Bands

Pixel Size
250 meters

Bands

Name Min Max Pixel Size Description
DM 0 4 meters

Drought classes

Terms of Use

Terms of Use

The work is licensed under an Open data license for use. The U.S. Drought Monitor is jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Map courtesy of NDMC.

Citations

Citations:

  • National Drought Mitigation Center; U.S. Department of Agriculture; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (2023). United States Drought Monitor. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/. Accessed 2023-09-17

Explore with Earth Engine

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var usdm = ee.ImageCollection(
  "projects/sat-io/open-datasets/us-drought-monitor"
);
/*
Category	Description
DO	Abnormally Dry
D1	Moderate Drought
D2	Severe Drought
D3	Extreme Drought
D4	Exceptional Drought
*/

var usdm = ee.Image(usdm.toList(usdm.size()).get(-1));

// Define a dictionary which will be used to make legend and visualize image on map
var dict = {
  names: [
    "DO	Abnormally Dry", //1
    "D1 Moderate Drought", //2
    "D2 Severe Drought", //3
    "D3 Extreme Drought", //4
    "D4 Exceptional Drought", //5
  ],
  colors: ["FFFF00", "FCD37F", "FFAA00", "E60000", "730000"],
};

// Create a panel to hold the legend widget
var legend = ui.Panel({
  style: {
    position: "bottom-left",
    padding: "8px 15px",
  },
});

// Function to generate the legend
function addCategoricalLegend(panel, dict, title) {
  // Create and add the legend title.
  var legendTitle = ui.Label({
    value: title,
    style: {
      fontWeight: "bold",
      fontSize: "18px",
      margin: "0 0 4px 0",
      padding: "0",
    },
  });
  panel.add(legendTitle);

  var loading = ui.Label("Loading legend...", { margin: "2px 0 4px 0" });
  panel.add(loading);

  // Creates and styles 1 row of the legend.
  var makeRow = function (color, name) {
    // Create the label that is actually the colored box.
    var colorBox = ui.Label({
      style: {
        backgroundColor: color,
        // Use padding to give the box height and width.
        padding: "8px",
        margin: "0 0 4px 0",
      },
    });

    // Create the label filled with the description text.
    var description = ui.Label({
      value: name,
      style: { margin: "0 0 4px 6px" },
    });

    return ui.Panel({
      widgets: [colorBox, description],
      layout: ui.Panel.Layout.Flow("horizontal"),
    });
  };

  // Get the list of palette colors and class names from the image.
  var palette = dict["colors"];
  var names = dict["names"];
  loading.style().set("shown", false);

  for (var i = 0; i < names.length; i++) {
    panel.add(makeRow(palette[i], names[i]));
  }

  Map.add(panel);
}

/*
  // Display map and legend ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
*/

// Add the legend to the map
addCategoricalLegend(legend, dict, "US Drought Monitor");

// Add USDM Image image to the map
Map.addLayer(
  usdm,
  { min: 0, max: 4, palette: dict["colors"] },
  usdm.get("system:index").getInfo()
);
Open in Code Editor
The U.S. Drought Monitor is a map released every Thursday, showing parts of the U.S. that are in drought. The map uses five classifications: abnormally dry (D0), showing areas that may be going into or are coming out of drought, and four levels of drought: moderate (D1), severe (D2), extreme …
projects/sat-io/open-datasets/us-drought-monitor, community-dataset,drought,noaa,precipitation,sat-io,usda
2000-01-04T00:00:00Z/2025-09-23T00:00:00Z
-90 -180 90 180
Google Earth Engine