Drought is a main meteorological disaster leading to significant environmental, social and economic consequences due to its high frequency and large influence. Traditional methods of drought monitoring are to simplify drought into drought indices derived from weather station data. With the development of remote sensing, It is necessary to assess the potential of such indices derived from a specific sensor for drought monitoring in a particular region before we apply this remote-sensed measure in large area. This study assesses the SPIs in different time scales and their performance in identifying drought, as well as the potential of MODIS-derived spectral indices in drought monitoring in Hebei, an arid and semi-arid areas of Northern China. Reveal the relationship between different MODIS data and meteorological SPI in different time scales, so as to identify their feasibility for drought monitoring.