Abstract: Background The accelerated water circulation has changed regional hydrological and meteorological elements, which can lead to more frequent flood, drought and soil erosion, and further influence the ecological environment. It is well known that extreme climate events are exhibiting an increase trend in most of the land areas. The increased intensity and frequency of extreme climate events have severe impacts on the human society and natural ecosystem. Therefore, it is of great significance to understand its recent changes in different regions. Fujian Province is located in the southeast coastal region of China with rapid urbanization, and in which there are frequent flood and drought disasters related to extreme climate events. Methods This paper analyzed the variability of extreme temperature and precipitation indices in Fujian Province during the period of 1960 to 2014, based on 23 meteorological stations covering daily precipitation, daily maximum temperature, daily minimum temperature and daily average temperature datasets from 1960 2014. The statistic methods including linear trend estimate method, least squares estimation and Mann-Kendall trend analysis method were employed to analyze these indices. Results The cold temperature index showed a decreasing trend. The cold index and cold night index showed significant decrease trends, but the heating temperature index (the crop growth period, warm night days and warm days) showed significant increase trends at the regional scale. Over the past 55 years, with the exception of the continuous wet days, all the extreme precipitation indices showed an increasing trend. In the spatial characteristics, the increase or decrease trends of the extreme temperature index were similar over the Fujian Province. Noting that the extreme warming indices had a significant upward trend in the whole region, and the regional differences of extreme precipitation index were obvious that the stations having significant increase trends were mainly distributed in the coastal areas. Conclusions All the extreme cold indices showed a decrease trend while the extreme warm indices showed an increase trend. The stations with sharp increasing trend of extreme cold index were mainly distributed in the northwest and northeast areas, and the extreme warm indices had significant upward trend across the whole region. The regional difference of extreme precipitation indices was relatively obvious, and the stations with sharp increase rates were mainly located in the coastal areas. As for the variability in precipitation, the total precipitation and precipitation extremes tended to increase while the wet days tended to be less, which suggests that the extreme precipitation events are more concentrated in time. Therefore, the risk of flood and local drought events increased in the region, and adaptive measures for mitigation of climatic disasters and water resources management should be considered in Fujian Province.