Drought affected the highest number of world people among natural disasters during the past few decades. Since the late 1970s, there has been a shift in El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) towards more warm events, closely related to a worldwide intensified tendency of drought. The pastoral animal husbandry, a major industry in Mongolia, has repeatedly been suffering from drought and dzud (cold-season disaster) due to its dry and cold climate. The present paper provides an overview of existing drought early warning systems (EWSs) in the world and operation and research in Mongolia related to meteorological disasters. Then, we propose a possible EWS suitable for the Mongolian nature and socio-economy. Although the state-of-the-art long-range weather forecast has not yet produced a reliable quantitative information, timely and accurate monitoring of climate memory of land-surface anomaly conditions (such as soil moisture, pasture, and livestocks) that resulted, with a time lag, from summer deficit rainfall will enable us to deliver an early warning of possible drought and dzud and finally to mitigate their effects on animal husbandry.
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