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Hydrological drought is currently underrepresented in global monitoring systems, mainly due the shortage of near real-time estimates of river discharge at the global scale. In this study, the outputs of the Lisflood model are used to define a low-flow drought index, which shows a good correspondence with long-term records of the Global Runoff Data Centre in the period 1980–2014, as well as with verified information from the literature on six major drought events (covering different regions and watershed sizes). In contrast, the near real-time simulation (from 2015 onward) provides temporally inconsistent estimates over about 20% of the modelled cells (mostly over South America and Central Africa), even if reasonable results are obtained over other regions, as confirmed by intercomparison with the operational outcomes of the European Drought Observatory for the 2018 drought. In spite of the highlighted limitations, valuable information for operational drought monitoring can be retrieved from these simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]