Drought propagation and its driving forces in central Asia under climate change

Drought propagation time (PT) and threshold (TR) play crucial roles in real-time monitoring of drought progression and severity under climate change, for which there is currently no unified method or standard for quantitative characterization. Central Asia (CA), a prototypical arid region, is frequently plagued by droughts that profoundly impact its ecology and socioeconomic framework, leaving a lack of comprehension about the transition from meteorological to soil moisture drought as for the complex impact of ground-atmosphere interaction. Therefore, this study revealed high-resolution PT and TR across CA based on precipitation and soil moisture datasets by employing a Bayesian causal framework for drought propagation modeling, in which the sliding window with the random forest method was integrated to investigate the dynamic changes and driving factors of drought propagation over recent decades. The conclusions drawn are as follows: (1) in the southeastern hilly and eastern plateau, a prolonged PT (i.e., longer than 100 days) was experienced during the extremities of the growing season, while most areas had a shorter mid-season PT (i.e., less than 40 days), in which the soil moisture drought intensity was positively correlated with longer PTs; (2) from 1948 to 2022, the central and western regions in CA generally displayed lower TR values than those in the northeast, seldom exceeding 30 mm, reflecting the regional precipitation gradient and the positive relationship between TR and severe soil moisture droughts; and (3) the increase in vapor pressure deficit (VPD), the decrease in aridity index (AI) for the reduced precipitation, and the considerable impact of vegetation transpiration on soil moisture consumption contributed to accelerated drought propagation. Overall, this study reveals the complex dynamics and mechanisms of drought propagation amid environmental changes, laying the foundation for innovative drought early warning systems and emergency management approaches in CA.