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The South Pacific convergence zone is a region of high precipitation spanning a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean that can shift northwards and become longitudinally oriented; such extreme zonal events have severe weather and climatic impacts and are predicted to become more frequent under greenhouse warming conditions.

Extreme La Niña events occur when cold sea surface temperatures across the central Pacific Ocean create a strong temperature gradient to the Maritime continent in the west. This work projects an increase in frequency of La Niña events due to faster land warming relative to the ocean, and a greater chance of them occurring following extreme El Niño events.

Extreme El Niño events cause global disruption of weather patterns and affect ecosystems and agriculture through changes in rainfall. Model projections show that a doubling in the occurrence of such extreme episodes is caused by increased surface warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, which results in the atmospheric conditions required for these event to occur.

Anomalies of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean Dipole often occur simultaneously. An analysis of observations and models suggests that, in addition, the negative phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole tends to occur 14 months before an El Niño event, with implications for El Niño predictability.

This study explores alternative stable states in microbial communities. Focusing on a respiratory tract community of 6 species, the authors identified four distinct stable states that are predicted to be driven by cooperative growth. The findings contrast with the common association between competitive interactions and multistability in microbial communities. Using a sample of a thousand eddies across the world’s oceans, this study examines the response of forage fauna detected by shipboard acoustics. The findings show that a minority of eddies exhibit significant effects on forage fauna, but that an oasis effect can sometimes occur. This highlights the need for further research to elucidate how eddies might attract marine predators.

This paper shows that tropical cyclones contribute between 40% and 100% of the extreme wave events approaching coastlines in basins prone to tropical cyclone activity, while they can also impact remote areas via swell propagation across the ocean.

The authors compile an underwater sonar database to understand the current and future distribution of pelagic fauna in the world’s oceans. They show loss of 3–22% of these fauna in low and mid latitudes under high-emissions scenarios, with impact reduced to less than half if global warming is contained below 2 °C.

The South Pacific Convergence Zone is the largest rainband in the Southern Hemisphere, and its response to global warming is still undetermined. In this study a hierarchy of climate models show that the uncertainty in rainfall projections in the South Pacific Convergence Zone is the result of two competing mechanisms.

El Niño tends to follow 2 years after volcanic eruptions, but the physical mechanism behind this phenomenon is unclear. Here the authors use model simulations to show that a Pinatubo-like eruption cools tropical Africa and drives westerly wind anomalies in the Pacific favouring an El Niño response.

Climate change will alter the distribution of tuna, impacting the economies of Pacific Small Island Developing States. This study finds that greater greenhouse gas emissions will worsen these impacts.

The South Pacific Convergence Zone describes a band of heavy precipitation extending south-eastwards from the Solomon Islands to French Polynesia. This Review discusses the mechanisms explaining the diagonal orientation of the South Pacific Convergence Zone, its variability and projected changes under anthropogenic warming.

The Indian Ocean Dipole is a key mode of interannual climate variability influencing much of Asia and Australia. A Review suggests that in response to greenhouse warming, mean conditions of the Indian Ocean will shift toward a positive dipole state, but with no overall shift in the frequency of positive and negative events as defined relative to the mean climate state.

Our current understanding of the spatio-temporal complexity of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation phenomenon is reviewed and a unifying framework that identifies the key factors for this complexity is proposed.

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation is a naturally occurring fluctuation that originates in the tropical Pacific region and affects the lives of millions of people worldwide. An overview of relevant research suggests that progress in our understanding of the impact of climate change on many of the processes that contribute to El Niño variability is considerable, but projections for the phenomenon itself are not yet possible.

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has global climatic implications, necessitating understanding of its observed and projected changes. This Review brings together knowledge of ENSO in a warming climate, revealing projected increases in ENSO magnitude, as well as ENSO-related rainfall and sea surface temperature variability.

This Review looks at the state of knowledge on the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a natural climate phenomenon. It discusses recent advances and insights into how climate change will affect this natural climate varibility cycle.