The El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences global climate patterns on interannual timescales and thus may have significant implications for variability in the terrestrial carbon cycle. It has been increasingly recognized that two different expressions of El Niño exist: (i) Central‐Pacific (CP) and (ii) Eastern‐Pacific (EP). Both types of El Niño have above average sea surface temperature anomalies in the respective locations. Studies exploring the impact of these El Niño types on the carbon cycle have identified changes in the amplitude in interannual atmospheric CO₂, as well as different lags in terrestrial CO₂ release following increased tropical near surface temperature. Here we employ the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS within a synthetic experimental framework to explore the sensitivity and potential long-term impacts of different types of El Niño on the terrestrial carbon sink. We manipulate the occurrence of CP and EP events in the later half of the 21^st century by replacing all CP with EP and vice versa. We use this experimental approach to identify hotspots of the long-term terrestrial carbon sink and discuss the mechanisms that drive the observed changes.