United states droughts of late 1980´s as seen by NOAA polar orbiting satellites

Recently NOAA/NESDIS designed a new AVHRR-based Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) that can be used for drought detecting and tracking. This index provides a numerical estimate of weather impact on vegetation and also measures vegetation conditions. Several large-area experiments showed that the VCI had excellent ability to detect drought and to measure time of its onset, intensity, duration, and impact on vegetation. This paper describes droughts of the late 1980s in the United States identified from NOAA polar orbiting satellites