Fig. 3: Evidence of super El Niño-induced climate regime shifts (CRSs) across various regions and climatic variables.

Time series of standardized anomalies for sea surface temperature (SST), surface air temperature (SAT), and surface soil moisture (Soil) across selected regions with respect to 1948–2022 climatology. The vertical black lines and blue triangles denote the timing of CRSs in each variable associated with three super El Niño events significant at the 95% confidence level. The central map highlights the key regions selected as examples. a–d SST regions include the Central North Pacific (CNP), western North Pacific (WNP), southeastern Pacific (SEP) and Gulf of Mexico (GM); e–h SAT regions include the southwestern Pacific (SWP), Maritime Continent (MC), Eastern Africa (EAF), and northern Europe (NEU); i–l Surface soil moisture regions include the Central Australia (CAU), Central Asia (CAS), western Greenland (WGL) and the Amazon (AMA). “PAC” in the panel titles denotes “Pacific”. DJF, MAM, JJA, SON, and annual represent December–February, March–May, June–August, September–November, and annual mean, respectively. Pink and blue shaded areas denote positive and negative anomalies, respectively.