Drought is perhaps the most complex natural hazard. Drought monitoring is an essential component of drought risk management. It is usually performed with the use of various drought indices. A number of drought indices have been introduced and applied in the drought monitoring in different regions to date all over the world. Xinjiang was divided into five sub-regions with Fuzzy Clustering Method along with considering its geographic and geomorphic conditions and different vapor sources: northern Xinjiang

southern Xinjiang

northern slope of Tianshan Mountain

southern slope of Tianshan Mountain

and the eastern part of Tianshan Mountain. Comparability analyses and correlation analyses have been carried out between the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)

the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)

the Effective Drought Index (EDI)

and the Self-calibrating PDSI (scPDSI) to investigate advantages and disadvantages of four drought indices and to pick out the most applicable drought index for the five sub-regions in Xinjiang based on daily precipitation and temperature data from 50 meteorological stations in Xinjiang. SPI

SPEI

and EDI respond quickly to precipitation and temperature. The tendency and changing characteristics were in consistent with each other. Drought classes and wet classes defined with SPI are higher and lower than with EDI

respectively. Since SPEI can take into account of combined action of precipitation and temperature in the evaluation of drought and wet

some severe droughts that cannot be detected with SPI and scPDSI can be monitored with SPEI. The correlation between SPI and EDI is better than it between SPEI and EDI. The difference of variation tendency between SPI

SPEI

EDI and scPDSI is very large and the relationship between scPDSI and other drought indices is worst. Therefore

scPDSI is not applicable to drought monitoring in Xinjiang. In addition

drought frequency

drought severity

drought stations proportion of different classes of annual and seasonal drought have been analyzed with SPEI12. No matter annual or seasonal droughts

there are obvious regional and seasonal characteristics. And the influence area has been reduced to an extent.