Two components underlie the mixed-type El Niño: quantification and future projection

Frequent strong El Niño events, including the extremes of 2015/16 and 2023/24, have exerted profound global climatic impacts.

By Lianyi, Du, Guo +3Frontiers in ClimateOct 22, 2026

Score████░░░░░░4.3

Key numbers

6.4% in moderate events to

VerdictWorth a reader's time today.

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Abstract

Frequent strong El Niño events, including the extremes of 2015/16 and 2023/24, have exerted profound global climatic impacts. Unlike canonical Eastern Pacific (EP) and Central Pacific (CP) types, defined by the location of maximum sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, these events exhibit a distinct mixed-type pattern characterized by warming in both regions. However, the respective contributions of the EP and CP patterns to the mixed-type events remain poorly understood. Here, using a binary linear regression based on E- and C-indices associated with the EP and CP patterns, we quantify the contribution of the E- and C-components, and show that strong El Niño events are mostly of the mixed-type. Our results indicate that the C-component is the primary source of ENSO variability, while during strong El Niño events, the average contribution of the E-component increases significantly from 6.4% in moderate events to 46.8%, thereby forming the mixed-type El Niño events. Analyses of 45 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) project that, in a warming climate, the frequency of the strong mixed-type events increases by 33.5%. We emphasize that the mixed-type El Niño is the primary contributor to strong El Niño events, with a proportion far exceeding that of either the EP or CP type. Our method offers a framework for understanding ENSO diversity and its response to climate change.

Zhang Lianyi, Yan Du, Chenying Guo, Yuhong Zhang, Zesheng Chen, Wenju Cai

The editor's rubric

Heuristic review

Leverage2 / 5: Reusable within one subfield (a technique, dataset, or protocol a few groups will adopt).; 16% of this desk’s rubric
Magnitude3 / 5: Large gain: roughly 2x, or a clear new state of the art on a hard, unsaturated problem.; 20% of this desk’s rubric
Evidence3 / 5: Solid: multiple benchmarks or cohorts, ablations, fair baselines, released code or data.; 20% of this desk’s rubric
Novelty2 / 5: A new combination of known ideas.; 10% of this desk’s rubric
Trajectory2 / 5: Some room to improve with obvious engineering.; 14% of this desk’s rubric
Stakes3 / 5: Meaningful benefit to many people within a few years.; 20% of this desk’s rubric

Dimension	Level	Weight	What that level means
Leverage	██░░░ 2	16%	Reusable within one subfield (a technique, dataset, or protocol a few groups will adopt).
Magnitude	███░░ 3	20%	Large gain: roughly 2x, or a clear new state of the art on a hard, unsaturated problem.
Evidence	███░░ 3	20%	Solid: multiple benchmarks or cohorts, ablations, fair baselines, released code or data.
Novelty	██░░░ 2	10%	A new combination of known ideas.
Trajectory	██░░░ 2	14%	Some room to improve with obvious engineering.
Stakes	███░░ 3	20%	Meaningful benefit to many people within a few years.

Editor’s rationale

Heuristic triage from title and abstract text only, not a reading of the paper. Cues found: gains (relative gain, outperforms); verification (multiple benchmarks); stakes (global scale, climate).

How the score was computed

rank-2026-10-18

Score████░░░░░░4.3

Score = 10 × (75% × adjusted merit / 10 + 15% × attention + 10% × freshness)

Desks place stronger verdicts first, then use this score to order work within the same verdict.

Merit: 5.2 / 10; Weighted rubric, evidence-gated.
Adjusted merit: 4.5 / 10; Shrunk toward the desk prior by editor confidence (40%).
Attention: 0%; Citations, upvotes, points, mentions.
Freshness: 91%; Half-life decay since publication.

Citations0 (reference 15, via openalex, Oct 23, 2026, 07:03 UTC)

The record

Reviewed by heuristic-v7 on Oct 23, 2026, 07:03 UTC. Paper type: empirical.
Categories: Climate variability and models, Geology and Paleoclimatology Research, Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations, Global and Planetary Change, Environmental Science
BRIEF, No.4 in the Climate & Energy edition of October 23, 2026.