That's an impressive deep dive. Good stuff.
I really haven't paid much attention to the warm poo stuff, but I just plotted precip rate since 1/1/24 and can see that in the same area as the VP stuff shows above. It's interesting that the SST anomalies in the area where convection drives the pattern aren't very warm from an anomaly standpoint...but do increase with latitude as you head toward Japan...water is warm there as well and can help influence the pattern.