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

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 CMAP rainfall and ERA5 reanalysis datasets, our study reveals that El Niño-like convection is the most primary rainfall pattern driving the global circulation variations. Furthermore, we find that the global climate relevance of El Niño-like convection will be doubled by the end of this century, as projected consistently by 23 climate models. Such “rich nodes get richer” phenomenon in the network science is probably attributable to the dipolar rainfall changes over the western-central Pacific, coupled with the projected El Niño-like sea surface temperature changes. This study highlights the dominant role of El Niño-like convection on the global climate variations, especially under the future changing climate.