Abstract: Under the background of global climate change, accurate monitoring and comprehensive assessment of drought are of great practical significance to the sustainable development of regional agriculture. Considering multiple causes and the complexity of the occurrence of droughts, this paper employs multiple input variables, i.e., precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration and surface water content to construct a modified composite drought index (MCDI). The derived MCDI was calculated as a multivariate drought index to measure the drought conditions and verify its accuracy in Hubei Province in China. Compared with the widely used single/multivariate drought indexes, i.e., standardized precipitation index (SPI) and meteorological drought composite index (CI), the accuracy of drought monitoring results is verified. Moreover, combined with the historical records in Hubei Province, it is found that the drought process monitored by MCDI is more consistent with the actual drought condition. MCDI can be employed as a new method for comprehensive assessment of regional droughts.