To identify emerging interdependencies between traded stocks we investigate the behavior of the stocks of FTSE 100 companies in the period 2000-2015, by looking at daily stock values. Exploiting the power of information theoretical measures to extract direct influences between multiple time series, we compute the information flow across stock values to identify several different regimes. While small information flows is detected in most of the period, a dramatically different situation occurs in the proximity of global financial crises, where stock values exhibit strong and substantial interdependence for a prolonged period. This behavior is consistent with what one would generally expect from a complex system near criticality in physical systems, showing the long lasting effects of crashes on stock markets.

A teleconnection between North Atlantic tropical storms and Amazon fires is investigated as a possible case of compound remote extreme events. The seasonal cycles of the storms and fires are in phase with a maximum around September and have significant inter-annual correlation. Years of high Amazon fire activity are associated with atmospheric conditions over the Atlantic which favour tropical cyclones. We propose that anomalous precipitation and latent heating in the Caribbean, partly caused by tropical storms, leads to a thermal circulation response which creates anomalous subsidence and enhances surface solar heating over the Amazon. The Caribbean storms and precipitation anomalies could thus promote favourable atmospheric conditions for Amazon fire.

The SubNiño4 index based on the subsurface potential temperature around the thermocline beneath the west Pacific warm pool, the Niño 4 region, is examined as a long-range indicator of the surface El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and ENSO-driven atmospheric response. The SubNiño4 index captures the evolution of subsurface ocean heat content between the El Niño and La Niña phases of the ENSO cycle, allowing it to serve as a long-range indicator of surface ENSO and hence also many ENSO-driven atmospheric anomalies. The SubNiño4 index has more temporally stable correlations with Niño 3.4 than the widely used western equatorial Pacific warm-water volume indicator. For a lead time of the order of 12 months, Niño 3.4 correlations afforded by the lead observed SubNiño4 index become similar to and can exceed those produced by typical dynamical ENSO predictions. The value and viability of the SubNiño4 index as a simple statistical long-range indicator of ENSO-driven atmospheric response is shown for regional precipitation anomalies throughout the Tropics and fires in Continental and Maritime Southeast Asia.