Signatures of climatic phenomena in climate networks: El Niño and La Niña.

Abstract

We construct climate networks based on surface air temperature data to identify distinct signatures of climatic phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña events, which trigger many climatic disruptions around the globe with severe economic and ecological consequences. The climate network has been seen to show a discontinuous phase transition in the size of the normalized largest cluster and the susceptibility during both events. The correlation matrix of the network shows a structure that has distinct characteristics for El Niño events, La Niña events, and normal conditions of the Pacific Ocean. We also identify the signatures of the El Niño southern oscillations in the heat map of the cross-correlation and network quantifiers like the betweenness centrality. The distribution of teleconnections of distinct strengths, the betweenness centrality distributions, and the geographic location of nodes of high betweenness centrality yield important insights into the structure of the network and the transfer of information between different parts. We further discuss the predictive power of these quantities.