Teleconnection patterns of different El Niño types revealed by climate network curvature
This work addresses a gap in climate science by providing a global picture of teleconnection patterns for different El Niño types, which is incremental as it builds on existing knowledge of regional impacts.
The study tackled the problem of distinguishing global teleconnection patterns for Eastern Pacific (EP) and Central Pacific (CP) El Niño types, revealing that EP events primarily involve tropical teleconnections while CP events involve tropical-extratropical connections, particularly in the Pacific, with the eastern Pacific mediating remote influences for both types.
The diversity of El Niño events is commonly described by two distinct flavors, the Eastern Pacific (EP) and Central Pacific (CP) types. While the remote impacts, i.e. teleconnections, of EP and CP events have been studied for different regions individually, a global picture of their teleconnection patterns is still lacking. Here, we use Forman-Ricci curvature applied on climate networks constructed from 2-meter air temperature data to distinguish regional links from teleconnections. Our results confirm that teleconnection patterns are strongly influenced by the El Niño type. EP events have primarily tropical teleconnections whereas CP events involve tropical-extratropical connections, particularly in the Pacific. Moreover, the central Pacific region does not have many teleconnections, even during CP events. It is mainly the eastern Pacific that mediates the remote influences for both El Niño types.