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Abstract

Climatic conditions influence the culture and economy of societies
and the performance of economies. Specifically, El Nin˜ o as an
extreme climate event is known to have notable effects on health,
agriculture, industry, and conflict. Here, we construct directed and
weighted climate networks based on near-surface air temperature
to investigate the global impacts of El Nin˜ o and La Nin˜ a. We find
that regions that are characterized by higher positive/negative
network “in”-weighted links are exhibiting stronger correlations
with the El Nin˜ o basin and are warmer/cooler during El Nin˜ o/La
Nin˜ a periods. In contrast to non-El Nin˜ o periods, these stronger inweighted
activities are found to be concentrated in very localized
areas, whereas a large fraction of the globe is not influenced by
the events. The regions of localized activity vary from one El Nin˜ o
(La Nin˜ a) event to another; still, some El Nin˜ o (La Nin˜ a) events are
more similar to each other. We quantify this similarity using network
community structure. The results and methodology reported
here may be used to improve the understanding and prediction of
El Nin˜ o/La Nin˜ a events and also may be applied in the investigation
of other climate variables.