Global warming is associated with a stabilization of the Earth climate.. less low pressures/wind, more high pressures. Since the Tropical Pacific is associated with strong winds as an "average", cooling the waters as much as 3-5c along the equator for "neutral" compared to areas north and south, then an El Nino, and actually strong El Nino, is a stabilization of that system. This is not what has happened since 1998... we have actually seen cold SSTs relative to the global warming on the order of 4-5 standard deviations below normal during that time.. the thought is that more El Nino's will happen in the coming time to even this system out, as a product of global warming. However, the last 27 years is a very interesting datapoint because something is causing an opposite pattern.