Leading Pattern of Spring Drought Variability over East Asia and Associated Drivers

Drought events have become more frequent and intense over East Asia in recent decades, leading to hugesocioeconomic impacts. Although the droughts have been studied extensively by cases or for individual regions, theirleading variability and associated causes remain unclear. Based on the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index(SPEI) and ERA5 reanalysis product from 1979 to 2020, this study evealuates the severity of spring droughts in East Asiaand investigates their variations and associated drivers. The results indicate that North China and Mongolia have ex perienced remarkable trends toward dryness during spring in recent decades, while southwestern China has witnessed anopposite trend toward wetness. The first Empirical Orthogonal Function mode of SPEI variability reveals a similarseesawing pattern, with more severe dryness in northwestern China, Mongolia, North China, South Korea, and Japan butincreased wetness in Southwestern China and southeast Asia. Further investigation reveals that the anomalously dry (wet)surface in North (Southwestern) China is significantly associated with anomalously high (low) temperature, less (more)precipitation, and reduced (increased) soil moisture during the previous winter and early spring, regulated by an anomalousanticyclone (cyclone) and thus reduced (increased) water vapor convergence. The spring dry-wet pattern in East Asia isalso linked to cold sea surface temperature anomalies in the central-eastern Pacific. The findings of this study haveimportant implications for improving the prediction of spring drought events in East Asia.