Abstract As exemplified by El Niño, the tropical Pacific Ocean strongly influences regional climates and their variability worldwide1,2,3. It also regulates the rate of global temperature rise in response to rising GHGs4. The tropical Pacific Ocean response to rising GHGs impacts all of the world’s population. State-of-the-art climate models predict that rising GHGs reduce the west-to-east warm-to-cool sea surface temperature gradient across the equatorial Pacific5.