The hypothesis of self-organized criticality explains the existence of long-range 'space-time' correlations, observed inseparably in many natural dynamical systems. A simple link between these correlations is yet unclear, particularly in fluctuations at 'external drive' time scales. As an example, we consider a class of sandpile models displaying non-trivial correlations. Employing the scaling methods, we demonstrate the computation of spatial correlation by establishing a link between local and global temporal correlations.