Fig. 2: There is no dipole in the pattern of burned area between eastern and western tropical forests in China.

We examined annual patterns of annual area burned in a southwest China and its ecoregions, and in b southeast China and its ecoregions. c Pearson correlations in annual burned area across ecoregions (one, two or three asterisks indicate significant correlations at P < 0.05, <0.01 and <0.0001 respectively) were positive within eastern and within western ecoregions, and either positive or not-significant across eastern and western ecoregions. d We correlated monthly burned area and ENSO 3.4 SST index at different lags (0, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 12 months) and show the highest correlation in absolute terms (significant correlations are indicated by a dot). Correlations in c and d are indicated by the color. Ecoregion IDs from Dinerstein et al.¹⁴: 236, Jian Nan subtropical evergreen forests; 256, Northern Indochina subtropical forests; 268, South China-Vietnam subtropical evergreen forests; 642, Guizhou Plateau broadleaf and mixed forests; 643 Yunnan Plateau subtropical evergreen forests.