Drought and water scarcity are important issues in many regions of the Earth. While an increase in the severity and frequency of droughts can lead to water scarcity situations, particularly in regions that are already water-stressed, overexploitation of available water resources can exacerbate the consequences of droughts. In the worst case, this can lead to long-term environmental and socio-economic impacts. It is, therefore, necessary to improve both monitoring and sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasting for droughts and water availability and to develop innovative indicators and methodologies that translate the information provided into effective drought early warning and risk management. This session addresses statistical, remote sensing and physically-based techniques, aimed at monitoring, modelling and forecasting hydro-meteorological variables relevant to drought and/or water scarcity. These include, but are not limited to, precipitation, snow cover, soil moisture, streamflow, groundwater levels, and extreme temperatures. The development and implementation of drought indicators meaningful to decision-making processes, and ways of presenting and explaining them to water managers, policymakers and other stakeholders, are further issues that are addressed. The session aims to bring together scientists, practitioners and stakeholders in the fields of hydrology and meteorology, as well as in the field of water resources and/or risk management; interested in monitoring, modelling and forecasting drought and water scarcity, and in analyzing their interrelationships, hydrological impacts, and the feedbacks with society. Particularly welcome are applications and real-world case studies in regions subject to significant water stress, where the importance of drought warning, supported through state-of-the-art monitoring and forecasting of water resources availability is likely to become more important in the future. Contributors to the session are invited to submit papers to the Special Issue (SI) entitled "Recent advances in drought and water scarcity monitoring, modelling, and forecasting", to be published in the open-access journal Natural Hazard and Earth System Sciences (https://www.natural-hazards-and-earth-system-sciences.net/special_issues/schedule.html). Submission is open until 30 July 2020, for manuscripts that are not under consideration for publication elsewhere.