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Abstract Meteorological and soil drought is disastrous to natural and social systems. It is expected that the occurrence of meteorological and soil drought compound events will become more frequent and extreme in the future. The propagation process of meteorological drought to soil drought plays an essential role in the occurrence of drought. However, the drought propagation process is not clear, especially the quantification of drought characteristic propagation process is rarely realized. This study constructs drought intensity propagation index (DIP) and drought duration propagation index (DDP), and then puts forward drought propagation partition in China. Furthermore, this study preliminarily discussed the driving factors of drought propagation and the relationship between land‐atmosphere interaction and main drought propagation partition (arid type drought propagation area, peer‐to‐peer type drought propagation area, and humid type drought propagation area). The results show that DDP and DIP are significantly negatively correlated in China from 1981 to 2020. From southeast to northwest, the propagation of drought intensity from meteorological drought to soil drought gradually increased and the propagation of drought duration gradually decreased. We further concluded that 68% of regions with similar intensity and duration of meteorological drought and soil drought (peer‐to‐peer type drought propagation area) are concentrated in semiarid and dry subhumid, which is exactly the area with strong land‐atmosphere interaction. In all land use types, grasslands are most prone to peer‐to‐peer propagation of drought. This study further reveals the law and mechanism of drought propagation and provides a new idea and attempt to clarify the drought propagation process.
Li et al. (Thu,) studied this question.