Future climate response to observed strong El Niño analogues.

The effect of future climate change on the boreal winter response to strong El Niño is investigated using pacemaker simulations with the EC-Earth3-CC model constrained towards observed tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies. Under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2-4.5, the surface temperature response to strong El Niño intensifies in North America, northern Africa, Australia and the North Atlantic compared to present day. However, future strong El Niño has a weaker climate impact in southern America and Africa. Temperature extremes under strong El Niño intensify in the future in some regions, with more cool days in eastern North America, while warm days in northern South America decrease. Assuming that the characteristics of strong El Niño events will not change in the future, we distinguish between changes in El Niño teleconnections and background climate changes, and found that the latter dominates the absolute climate response to strong El Niño events.