Congratulations to NCICS’s Jonathan Brannock, Ronnie Leeper, Olivier Prat, and Scott Wilkins, who were recognized as members of the 2021 Outstanding Science and Research Team by NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS).

This award celebrates the team’s successful integration of precipitation data from the CMORPH Climate Data Record into NOAA’s Global Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) data product. This cross-disciplinary effort required expertise across several knowledge domains, including satellite observing systems, precipitation and drought, geographic information systems, and information technology.

The global SPI data can be viewed interactively along with other metrics via a GIS interface at https://gdis-noaa.hub.arcgis.com/pages/drought-monitoring.

Steve Ansari, Rocky Bilotta, and Brian Nelson of NOAA NCEI were also recognized as part of the project team.