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Global climate mode resonance due to rapidly intensifying El Niño-Southern Oscillation

Malte F. Stuecker, Sen Zhao, Axel Timmermann, Rohit Ghosh, Tido Semmler, Sun-Seon Lee, Ja-Yeon Moon, Fei-Fei Jin, Thomas Jung | October 16th, 2025


Increasing ENSO amplitude and teleconnection patterns imply that remote extratropical precipitation responses, such as in Southern California and the Iberian Peninsula (Fig. 5), will also become stronger between alternating El Niño and La Niña events. Even though the recurrence of these events may become more predictable due to the increased regularity/periodicity and amplitude (Fig. 1)44, future ENSO teleconnections might generate enhanced whiplash effects on hydroclimate, which requires additional planning and management strategies to minimize the costs of climate damage. While similar increases in ENSO regularity and amplitude can be found in some CMIP6 model projections (Fig. 2), future work needs to assess the detailed dynamics across these models and assess the likelihood of the ENSO regime changes seen in AWI-CM3.

Keywords

atmospheric rivers, climate change, drought, flood management, water supply forecasting