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Drought is a meteorological phenomenon that threatens ecosystems, agricultural production, and living conditions. Central Asia is highly vulnerable to drought due to its special geographic location, water resource shortages, and extreme weather conditions, and poor management of water resources and reliance on irrigated agriculture exacerbate the effects of drought. In this study, the latest version of the Global Land Data Assimilation System was employed to calculate the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index at different time scales during the period from 1981 to 2020. The varimax Rotated Empirical Orthogonal Function was applied for subregional delineation of drought patterns in Central Asia, and various methods were employed for a comparative analysis of the spatiotemporal characteristics of drought in these Central Asian subregions. The results show that drought patterns vary considerably in the Central Asian subregions. Over the past 40 years, alternating wet and dry conditions occurred in Central Asia. North Kazakhstan experienced more drought events with lower severity. East and west differences appear after 2001, the west becoming drier and the east becoming wetter. Some regions near lakes, such as Balkhash, Issyk-Kul, and the Aral Sea, suffer from droughts of long duration and high severity. In the Tianshan region, droughts in the northern slopes occur more frequently, with shorter durations and higher intensity and peaks. Northwestern China and western Mongolia have extensive agricultural land and grasslands with highly fragile ecosystems that have become progressively drier since 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]