# Structural Gating and Effect-aligned Lag-resolved Temporal Causal Discovery Framework with Application to Heat-Pollution Extremes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10371 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10371/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 1 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Detecting causal associations in large nonlinear time series datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.07007/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This study proposes Structural Gating and Effect-aligned Discovery for Temporal Causal Discovery (SGED-TCD), a novel and general framework for lag-resolved causal discovery in complex multivariate time series. SGED-TCD combines explicit structural gating, stability-oriented learning, perturbation-effect alignment, and unified graph extraction to improve the interpretability, robustness, and functional consistency of inferred causal graphs. To evaluate its effectiveness in a representative real-world setting, we apply SGED-TCD to teleconnection-driven compound heatwave--air-pollution extremes in eastern and northern China. Using large-scale climate indices, regional circulation and boundary-layer variables, and compound extreme indicators, the framework reconstructs weighted causal networks with explicit dominant lags and relative causal importance. The inferred networks reveal clear regional and seasonal heterogeneity: warm-season extremes in Eastern China are mainly linked to low-latitude oceanic variability through circulation, radiation, and ventilation pathways, whereas cold-season extremes in Northern China are more strongly governed by high-latitude circulation variability associated with boundary-layer suppression and persistent stagnation. These results show that SGED-TCD can recover physically interpretable, hierarchical, and lag-resolved causal pathways in a challenging climate--environment system. More broadly, the proposed framework is not restricted to the present application and provides a general basis for temporal causal discovery in other complex domains.