«The fact that the drought atlases provide a nearly
hemispheric view of
hydroclimate variability provides an incredible amount of information that can be used to better understand what was happening in the atmosphere and ocean,» Coats said.
The
hemispheric scale adds to the potential uses of what was already the gold standard of paleo -
hydroclimate research, said Sloan Coats, a climate dynamicist at the University of Colorado who studies megadroughts using the atlases.