Intensified dominance of El Niño-like convection relevant for global atmospheric circulation variations

Abstract Tropical convection anomaly could serve as a crucial driver of global atmospheric teleconnections and weather extremes around the world. However, quantifying the dominances of convection anomalies with regional discrepancies, relevant for the variations of global atmospheric circulations, remains challenging. By using a network analysis of observation-based rainfall and ERA5 reanalysis datasets, our study reveals that El Niño-like convection is the most primary rainfall pattern driving the global atmospheric circulation variations. High local concurrences of above-normal rainfall events over equatorial central-eastern Pacific amplify their impacts, even though the most intense rainfall anomalies are observed near the Maritime Continent. Furthermore, we find that the impacts of El Niño-like convection will be tripled by the end of this century, as projected consistently by 23 climate models. Such “rich nodes get richer” phenomenon is probably attributable to the dipolar rainfall changes over the equatorial western-central Pacific. This study highlights the dominant role of El Niño-like convection on the global climate variations, especially under the future changing climate.