<p>Global climate change has significantly increased the frequency and intensity of droughts on both global and regional scales, resulting in emerging drought characteristics. Specifically, with the rising frequency of flash droughts and heatwave-enhanced droughts, meteorological-agricultural compound drought events are becoming more likely. In this context of intensifying compound drought phenomena, existing drought indices show limitations in characterizing such complex events. This study developed the Meteorological-Agricultural Compound Drought Index (AMDI) for China’s Huang-Huai-Hai region by integrating meteorological drought variables (precipitation and evapotranspiration) with agricultural drought variables (soil moisture) using the Copula methodology, combining key variables from both meteorological and agricultural droughts. This index facilitates monitoring of this emerging drought pattern and quantifies historical drought events by analyzing their severity, duration, and frequency over time to assess the current drought severity. The findings show that AMDI effectively captures the joint characteristics of meteorological and agricultural droughts. Compared to traditional drought indices such as SPEI and SSMI, AMDI demonstrates higher sensitivity and accuracy across multiple temporal scales, particularly excelling in early warning systems and the precise characterization of compound drought evolution. The establishment of AMDI provides effective support for monitoring meteorological-agricultural compound drought events.</p>