Concurrent precipitation deficits (or meteorological droughts) and high temperature extremes, referred to as compound meteorological droughts and hot extremes (CMDHEs), have attracted increasing attention due to their potentially amplified impacts on water resources, including groundwater. Because of delays in hydrogeological processes such as infiltration or percolation, groundwater storage typically responds to meteorological droughts with a lag, implying CMDHEs may not impose substantial impacts on water resources during the same period. In contrast, the concurrence of groundwater droughts (i.e., reduced water supply) and high temperature (i.e., reduced water supply via the evapotranspiration and increased water demand related to human activities under heatwaves), which constitutes compound groundwater droughts and hot extremes (CGDHEs), can pose substantially higher impacts on water resources. However, the difference in the distribution and changes of the two extremes (CMDHEs and CGDHEs) is still underassessed. In this study, we first explore the spatial distribution of the CGDHEs and then investigate their differences with CMDHEs, attributing these differences to the lags between meteorological droughts and groundwater droughts. We further estimate the optimal timescale of accumulated precipitation corresponding to groundwater droughts to reduce differences in the distribution and changes in the two compound extremes. Results indicate that the hotspots of CGDHEs mainly reside in northern South America, Europe, central and southern Africa, southeastern Asia, and eastern Australia, with large differences between CMDHEs and CGDHEs across arid regions. Based on the optimal timescale of accumulated precipitation, the difference in the distribution and changes is significantly reduced (e.g., with higher correlation coefficients between spatial extents of the two extremes), providing potential for near-real time monitoring of CGHDEs. The findings of this study can be useful for mitigating groundwater droughts to aid water resources management.