“…In order to quantify the degree to which the tier‐2 and flat patterns distinguish synoptic‐scale variability, we study the pattern‐conditioned probability of the occurrence of synoptic weather events known to impact weather in Southeast Asia. We consider cold surges (Chang et al ., 2005; Hattori et al ., 2011), tropical cyclones (Hodges et al ., 2017), the MJO (Wheeler and Hendon, 2004), the Borneo vortex (Chang et al ., 2005), the BSISO (Lee et al ., 2013), vortices in the South China Sea (Dang‐Quang et al ., 2016) and equatorial waves (Yang et al ., 2003), and use objective event definitions from previous studies. The following list describes the event definitions used to calculate the co‐occurrence between synoptic events and the weather patterns.…”