Abstract: This study aims to analyse the correlation between climate, dam failures, and the El Niño phenomenon in different river basins of China and to explore the potential impact of El Niño on the safe operation of reservoir dams. Based on daily precipitation data from 1957 to 2017 at meteorological stations in China, synthetic analysis and cross-wavelet methods were used to analyse the influence of El Niño on the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of extreme precipitation in different river basins, and to establish the correlation between climate and dam failure events and the El Niño phenomenon. The results show that the dam failure events in the nine basins are significantly correlated with El Niño, among which the dam failure events in the Haihe River basin are strongly correlated with the current year of El Niño. In contrast, the dam failure events in the Yellow River, Yangtze River, and Southeast River basins are strongly affected by the El Niño of the subsequent year. A significant negative correlation exists between the heavy precipitation index and the ONI in the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Haihe River basins. The ONI, the change in the ONI, usually exceeds the heavy precipitation event by approximately 1 year.