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Drought program

Project

The drought program is about setting up and expanding a national early detection and warning system for drought. The Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN and the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo are jointly developing a national monitoring and warning platform.

Project start01.06.2023
Project end31.12.2027
RegionNational
StatusCurrent projects
  • Hazards
  • Measurement & forecasting systems
  • Climate

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Goals of the drought program

The drought program aims to establish and operate a national early detection and warning system and to provide an information platform for drought.

The drought warnings are intended to enable everyone who may be affected by the effects of drought to take precautions and react in good time to avoid or minimize damage. In future, the warnings will be made available to the public via the MeteoSwiss website, the federal natural hazards portal, the new drought platform and the MeteoSwiss app. The desired push alerts can be subscribed to on the MeteoSwiss app.

The new information platform for drought will be available from spring 2025 and will provide comprehensive information on current conditions and drought forecasts for the whole of Switzerland. The platform will then be expanded further. The existing drought.ch research platform of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, which will continue to be operated as an experimental research platform, will serve as the basis.

The increasing frequency of drought events in recent years prompted the Federal Council to initiate the program in May 2022.

Specific program content

The program is implemented jointly by the three federal offices for meteorology and climatology MeteoSwiss, the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN and the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo.

MeteoSwiss is responsible for

  • setting up and operating a national soil moisture monitoring network
  • the development of drought indices and warning indicators
  • meteorological forecasts of drought-related variables over longer periods (4 weeks)
  • the satellite-based monitoring of plant stress

FOEN

  • - manages the program
  • - coordinates the development of the information platform and the warning chain
  • - coordinates cooperation with other federal offices and cantonal authorities
  • - is responsible for monitoring and modeling hydrological and forestry impacts

Swisstopo provides analyzable and pre-processed satellite images and vegetation indices from high-resolution satellites such as Sentinel-2.

Further information

About us

MeteoSwiss is the Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology. We keep our finger on the pulse of the weather and climate, so it’s all clear as day to you.

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