The Shiyang River Basin in Gansu Province is located in a semiarid area of northwestern China. In the context of global warming, the intensity and frequency of the drought in the area have experienced significant changes, which brings serious influences to agriculture in the area. The area of the drought in Shiyang River Basin was expanding in the past 50 years. So the drought has become one of the key and hot topics in climate change research, especially in a semiarid area of northwestern China in recent year. , and it is necessary to choose a more effective method to analyze temporal and spatial distribution of drought. Based on the observed data of 5 meteorological stations from 1962 to 2010, the method of a series of mathematical statistic theory, GIS spatial analysis techniques and a composite index ( CI) of the meteorological drought was applied to analyze the temporal and spatial characteristics of the drought in the area. According to the national standard