North American Drought Atlas: A History of Meteorological Drought Reconstructed from 835 Tree-Ring Chronologies for the past 2005 years

The North American Drought Atlas, is an HTML web browser program that provides access to 286 annual drought reconstructions extending as far back as 1,992 years into the past. The reconstructions are derived from 835 exactly dated, annual tree-ring chronologies. Data consists of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). This Atlas was developed by Paul J. Krusic and Edward R. Cook, Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY USA through support from the National Science Foundation, Division of Atmospheric Sciences, Award ATM 03-22403. The North American instrumental PDSI grid developed and used in the Atlas for reconstruction has a resolution of 2.5 degrees latitude by 2.5 degrees longitude. It is patterned after a global study of drought by Dai et al. (1998). The Atlas grid is composed of 286 grid points covering most of North America.