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Abstract The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key driver of global climate variability. Through its teleconnections, ENSO influences precipitation and temperature worldwide, yet its influence on compound extremes across agricultural systems is less well explored. Here, we examine ENSO’s influence on co-occurring hot-dry (HD) and hot-wet (HW) extreme events across global croplands, given their potential risks for food production. HD events can intensify crop water stress, while HW events can increase risks of pests, pathogens, and post-harvest losses. Using the Niño 3.4 index, high-resolution climate data (1901–2024), and crop extent and calendar data, we quantify the localized risk of these compound heat events and assess exposure for all croplands as well as staple crops of maize, rice, soybeans, and wheat. We show increased risk of both HD and HW events across global croplands during El Niño years. For example, the localized risk of HD events more than doubles across parts of global croplands including India, Australia, the Sahel, Brazil and Mexico during El Niño relative to ENSO-Neutral years, resulting in a significantly elevated global cropland HD exposure during developing El Niño summers. Localized risk of HW events also more than doubles particularly across India, Argentina, Brazil, and parts of Sahel with significantly elevated cropland exposure in decaying El Niño summers. Of the four staple crops, rice shows the strongest link to ENSO, with global exposure increasing >30% and >40% above Neutral years for HD and HW, respectively. These findings demonstrate that ENSO is associated with shifts in multi-crop exposure to compound heat extremes, highlighting the need to integrate ENSO-conditioned compound event risks into early warning systems and country- and crop-specific adaptation strategies to safeguard climate-related agricultural risks.
Gurazada et al. (Wed,) studied this question.