Drought is the most severe natural hazard affecting on human society and it exists generally in the whole global. In recent a century, the climate warming and society developing exacerbated the degree of drought influence and risk, which brought a great threat to global agriculture, water resource, ecological environment security and society sustainable development. It is the basis of fighting and managing drought and reducing drought vulnerability to improve the drought monitoring and early warning skill. In this paper, we introduce the new progress of drought monitoring and prediction operation and research in the United States in recent years, and provide an overview of the development of regional and global drought monitoring and prediction systems (DMAPS). It focuses on the scientific researches and technology improvement of drought. At last, the opportunities and challenges of drought monitoring and prediction are discussed referring to NOAA Interagency Drought task Force in 2016, which is beneficial to provide a new perspective for drought monitoring and forecast in China.

The characteristics of the extreme drought event occurred from 1941 to 1943 in North China and its influence were analyzed in this paper． Results show that this drought event was the second extremely arid events during the Republic of China period，and He’ nan Province was the center of this event． It occurred on interdecadal relatively warm period and persisted long time． This drought event influenced so many provinces，and disaster was so serious with locust occurrence． It made population suffer severe losses and food prices soaring as well as ecological environment deterioration．