Abstract:Since the 21st Century, Fujian Province has witnessed several severe or relatively severe drought events. Especially in recent years, drought has still been an important part of disaster prevention and mitigation in Fujian Province. According to the daily meteorological comprehensive index (MCI) of 66 national meteorological stations in Fujian from January 1961 to December 2020, the drought processes of the regional and 66 meteorological stations in Fujian are identified by referring to the local algorithm and the “Regional Drought Process Monitoring and Evaluation Method”. Besides, the Copula function is used to reveal the characteristics of drought process change and return period in Fujian. The results show that the variation trend of drought duration and intensity in Fujian is basically consistent. The drought processes are mainly single-season drought and two-season consecutive drought. The two-season consecutive drought mainly covers summer and autumn and the three-season conscutive drought only occurred from summer to winter. There are 1-3-year recurrence periods for most drought processes, and fewer return periods for severe drought processes. The worst droughts with a return period of more than 50 years were the summer-autumn-winter droughts in 1967 and 2003. The droughts with short return periods have long durations and strong intensities along the central and southern coastal areas, becoming gradually shortened and weakened northward. The central and southern coastal areas are still the areas suffering from the droughts with longer durations and stronger intensity, but the inland mountainous areas in the north of the province once had droughts with long duration and strong intensity simultaneously. In the past 60 years, there were 9 years with no drought, 18 years with the drought recurrence period reaching more than 100 years in some regions, and other 33 years with the drought return period not exceeding 50 years.