Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Recent Meteorological Droughts in Southeast Asia Singapore, Southeast Asia’s small, developed, densely populated, equatorial island nation, experienced a 2-month dry spell (meteorological drought) at the beginning of 2014. Although February falls within the relatively dry phase of the north-east monsoon season, the near-zero total of rainfall recorded at the reference meteorological station at Changi Airport was 160mm below the long-term monthly mean (NEA, 2014a), resulting in the driest month since 1869. By mid-March, small streams in both forested and urban catchments ran dry. Open water bodies including ponds and reservoirs shrank substantially in size. The long-range prospects for 2014 were not promising, as an El Nino event was predicted to develop later in the year (e.g. Ludescher et al., 2014). Unprecedented in the minds of many, the dry spell should nonetheless be viewed as an uncommon reminder of Singapore’s vulnerability to drought. During the last major El Nino in 1997/98, dry conditions occurred along a broad belt extending from middle of the Indian Ocean, through insular Southeast Asia, past the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The impact on Singapore was significant. Singapore rainfall in 1998 was 48% below the long-term average (NEA, 2014b). The highest daily temperature in Singapore’s record, 36°C, was recorded in March of that year (NEA, 2014c). During that period, a large number of uncontrolled fires in Indonesia ignited in conjunction with the dry conditions throughout the region. An estimated 45 600 km of vegetation was burned in the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra (Heil and Goldammer, 2001). Haze, primarily derived from aerosols from these wildfires, blanketed Singapore, Malaysia, and southern Thailand, causing US$9 billion worth of losses in tourism, transportation and farming industry revenue (Wardani, 2013). In June and July of 2013, wildfires in parts of Sumatra and Borneo— again partly arising from drier-than-normal conditions throughout Southeast Asia—produced another haze event in Singapore. The 3-h Pollution Standards Index (PSI) reached a record high of 401 on 21 June 2013, surpassing the previous record of 226 set during the 1997 haze event (BBC, 2013). During the 2014 dry spell, fires in Peninsular Malaysia also generated elevated PSI levels in Singapore due to prevailing NE winds. Fortunately, before the haze reached unhealthy conditions (PSA> 100), the dry spell ended abruptly in mid-March with the advent of several rainy days. Not only did heavy rains signal the end of the dry spell, they marked the beginning of wide-spread curiosity about the unpredictability of the weather, especially about the inherent linkage between haze and drought. Local media enquired about the cause of the dry period, the rapid swing from extreme dry to wet conditions, the causes of flash flooding, the likelihood of an El Nino, and the possible reoccurrence of haze (Ee, 2014). These wide-ranging questions reflected concern over both recurrent hazards (floods and haze) and Singapore’s long-term capacity to sustain water consumption as the nation grows and prepares for climate change.