Extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole (pIOD) affects weather, agriculture, ecosystems, and public health worldwide, particularly when exacerbated by an extreme El Niño. The Paris Agreement aims to limit warming below 2 °C and ideally below 1.5 °C in global mean temperature (GMT), but how extreme pIOD will respond to this target is unclear.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation is Earth’s most prominent source of interannual climate variability, alternating irregularly between El Niño and La Niña, and resulting in global disruption of weather patterns, ecosystems, fisheries and agriculture. The 1998–1999 extreme La Niña event that followed the 1997–1998 extreme El Niño event switched extreme El Niño-induced severe droughts to devastating floods in western Pacific countries, and vice versa in the southwestern United States.