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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.