The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) identifies drought as one of the major climate risks in south Asia. The report projects that climate change will affect food security by the middle of the 21st century, with the largest number of food-insecure people located in South Asia. In context of such rising variability in climatic patterns, there is an increasing need for climate information at all stages of water resource and agricultural planning activities. During past decades, large amounts of climate information have been made available by scientific communities, but the use of that information by decision makers at local remains low. Provisioning of user-oriented, easily accessible, timely, and decision-relevant scientific information in the form of a climate service can help society to cope with current climate variability and limit the economic and social damage caused by climate-related disasters. At a global level there are already a number of international and regional agriculture and drought monitoring systems, which play a fundamental role in the decision-making processes that govern food aid and agricultural products in the global market. While some of these systems are quite effective, there are large disparities between the monitoring capabilities of developed and developing nations. In South Asian countries direct drought related interventions are limited to meteorological drought monitoring and there are no institutional frameworks present on issues like formal drought declaration, compensation, and adaptation strategies. ICIMOD through its SERVIR Himalaya programme, supported by USAID and NASA, is aiming to assist regional member countries (RMCs) to improve their environmental management and resilience to climate change by integrating earth observation information and operationalizing climate services in relevant sectors. Also, the River Basins programme of ICIMOD, supported by Sustainable Development Investment Portfolio (SDIP) of the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), aims to improve the integrated river basin management to reduce physical vulnerabilities and improve food and energy security for mountain and downstream communities in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. Through these programmes, an effort is being made to promote effective use of earth observations and climate model data to support agriculture drought management practices and facilitate adaptation policies in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH). With cooperation from credible global institutions, joint development with national institutions and close interaction with existing end users, sporadic climate and agriculture monitoring activities can be translated into an efficient user oriented agriculture and food security monitoring services network. Objectives There is generally a lack of capacity in utilizing advanced methods for climate data analysis to support operational drought monitoring systems in the region. The overall objective of the workshop is to build capacity with climate scientists from ICIMOD and its member countries through a training on the techniques of climate data analysis tailored for use and applications for drought monitoring. Expected Outcomes The workshop will have three broad outputs: Evaluation of CHG rainfall data products with ground station data for three participating countries Development of long-term climatology and meteorological drought patterns for three participating countries Evaluating the applicability of Water Requirement Satisfaction (WRSI) as an indicator for agriculture drought monitoring in South Asia. By the end of the course the participants will be able to: Understand the CHIRPS rainfall estimation process. Use the GeoCLIM to: Conduct time series analysis of climate data Blend local stations with satellite estimated rainfall Understand the WRSI model Use the GeoWRSI to: Calculate the WRSI for specific crops and regions Use the WRSI results to estimate yields Expected Participants The target groups for the workshop are scientists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan with some experience in climate data analysis. Before the training, there will be a series of expert presentations to provide an overview of operational drought monitoring systems around the world. The workshop participants are requested to come with observed daily and monthly data (1989-2014) from their countries for data product validation purposes. This will allow for a demonstration of the calibration and validation procedure by the participants. On the last day of the workshop, participants will present their results. Participating institutions and Facilitators University of California, Santa Barbara, USA USGS EROS Center, SD , USA Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), Bangladesh Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), Pakistan Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), Thailand World Food Programme, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Nepal Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), Nepal Ministry of Agricultural Development Nepal – (PPRC Programme) , Nepal CIMMYT International, Nepal ICIMOD, Kathmandu, Nepal