El Niño Ready Nation (ENRN): A Nation whose government takes El Niño occurrences as serious quasi-periodic threats and seeks to enact policies to protect its citizens, their livelihoods, and properties—both public and private–can be considered an El Niño-ready nation (ENRN).
El Niño Ready Cities (ENRCs): ENSO extremes have slowly but increasingly become a concern to many cities around the globe. It is unclear though how many cities are aware of or concerned about potential threats from an El Niño or La Niña or, if aware, actually takes steps to prevent, avoid or minimize their adverse impacts when they recur some years later.
La Niña Ready Nations (LNRNs): This anomalous wind regime is responsible for anomalies in sea surface temperature; above average in the western Pacific and below average in the eastern Pacific. In accordance with the shifts in sea surface temperature, rainfall will be relatively higher in the western Pacific and relatively lower in the eastern Pacific.
During La Nina, the deviations of sea surface temperature and rainfall from normal are generally less dramatic than the deviations that occur during El Nino.