Tropical precipitation anomalies and d‐excess evolution during El Niño 2014‐16

The last 2014-16 El Niño event was among the three strongest episodes on record. El Niño considerably changes annual and seasonal precipitation across the tropics. Here, we present a unique stable isotope data set of daily precipitation collected in Costa Rica prior to, during, and after El Niño 2014-16, in combination with Lagrangian moisture source and precipitation anomaly diagnostics. δ2H composition ranged from -129.4 to +18.1 (‰) while δ18O ranged from -17.3 to +1.0 (‰). No significant difference was observed among δ18O (P=0.186) and δ2H (P=0.664) mean annual compositions. However, mean annual d-excess showed a significant decreasing trend (from +13.3 to +8.7 ‰) (P