Climate change is likely to lead to an increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including floods and droughts. To investigate spatiotemporal variation of meteorological and hydrological drought as well as the correlation between the two types of droughts, we calculated the standard precipitation evapotranspiration index and streamflow drought index for characterizing variability of drought frequency, coverage, duration and intensity in the Songhua River Area. The results indicate that: 1) Meteorological droughts exhibited an insignificant increasing trend at the annual scale from 1961 to 2010. The meteorological drought experienced higher frequency, wider coverage, longer duration and greater intensity during 1967-1983 and 1996-2010, while occurred rarely in 1961-1967 and 1984-1995. Spatial analysis showed that drought had higher frequency and greater intensity in east region than that in west region, longer duration in central region than other regions. 2) Hydrological drought also showed an increasing trend and have similar temporal-variation characteristics with meteorological droughts. The severity of hydrological drought towards more intensive in the Songhua River Basin and Naoli River Basin during the past fifty years, especially more significant during the past fifteen years. The hydrological drought experienced higher frequency, wider coverage, longer duration and greater intensity in the Naoli River Basin, while less severe in the Songhua River Basin. Therefore, it is necessary to take mitigation measures involving integrated water resources management and regulation to minimize losses caused by the increasing extremely hydrological droughts. 3) Hydrological drought has close relation with meteorological drought, which not only reflected by significant positive correlation but also indicated by 2, 3 and 3 months'lags response between them in the Nenjiang River Basin, the Songhua River Basin and the Main Stream Basin of the Songhua River, respectively. However, the hydrological drought has no significant correlation with meteorological drought as a result of intensive human activities in the Naoli River Basin.