Snow water volume (SWV) can be used to predict upcoming floods & droughts during the irrigation season in Central Asia. In this video I will show you how to use the Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) maps and SWV data from the USGS FEWSNet website to better understand the 2021 drought in Afghanistan. We will use the Kajaki Dam catchment in Helmand Province to compare the available water resources stored as snow at the end of winter from 2001 2021. In midMarch 2021 only 30% of the average snow water volume was available for the irrigation season. This has led to failed crops, malnutrition and starvation, which poses critical challenges to the people of Afghanistan in particular the staff of the Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW) who are responsible for water allocation.

In this video we use Excel to store the Snow Water Volume data in database format. We then process and present it in charts using PivotTables and PivotCharts. The Kajaki dam catchment Excel spreadsheet can be downloaded from Google Drive: https://bit.ly/3mw0JJq

My special thanks to Asadullah Haydarziy for sharing with me some recent pictures of the terrible drought situation in Helmand Province.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:40 USGS FEWSNet Snow Water Equivalent Maps
03:29 Download Snow Water Volume data
05:58 Data quality control (RIRO)
07:53 Snow Water data processing
08:40 Importance of database format
09:42 PivotTable & PivotCharts daily SWV data
10:44 End of Winter Snow Water Volume
11:49 2021 = 30% of average SWV
12:46 Monthly average SVW & annual variations
13:47 Concluding remarks

Useful links:
USGS FEWS Net data portal: https://earlywarning.usgs.gov/fews
EWXLite Data Viewer: https://earlywarning.usgs.gov/fews/ew...
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