Fig. 5: Observed and reconstructed annual- and global-mean precipitation during 1980–2020.

a, Time series of observed precipitation anomaly from GPCP (solid black line), reconstructed precipitation anomaly without pattern effect (black dashed line; based on equation (19) in Methods) and reconstructed with pattern effect (orange line; based on equation (20) in Methods) based on HadCRUT observed SST datasets. b, Same as a but for reconstructed precipitation based on NOAA observed SST datasets. c, Same as a but for reconstructed precipitation based on SST from ERA reanalysis. The solid red line denotes the global-mean precipitation anomaly from ERA reanalysis. d, Simulated global-mean historical precipitation (hist pr) from CMIP6 (blue line) and AMIP6 (red line) historical simulation ensemble mean with shading representing the inter-modal range. Dark grey shading indicates very extreme El Niño events (1982–1983, 1997–1998 and 2014–2016), and light grey indicates strong El Niño events (2009–2010). r denotes the correlation coefficient between reconstructed or simulated precipitation and GPCP observed precipitation, and the asterisk mark indicates the correlation is statistically significant (at 95% confidence level). r in brackets refers to the correlation coefficient after year 1995 when the GPCP dataset is suggested to be more reliable.