The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the main driver of interannual climate variability globally, manifesting as pseudo-oscillatory oceanic/atmospheric anomaly patterns in the tropical Pacific (e.g., Grothe et al., 2019;Timmermann et al., 2018), and affecting the climate of vast regions, notably across the Pacific Rim. In this region, ENSO exhibits a well-known average pattern of sea surface temperature (SST) and other variables, but also an important degree of heterogeneity across episodes. The phases of ENSO are not fully symmetrical: warm (El Niño) episodes may reach SST anomalies of larger amplitude than cold (La Niña) events, while La Niña episodes show greater temporal persistence than El Niño (Timmermann et al., 2018). Further, the spatial ENSO patterns may vary substantially, in particular regarding the location of warm SST anomalies during an El Niño episode (e.g.,