Abstract: —J. BLUNDEN, T. BOYER, AND E. BARTOW-GILLIES Earth’s global climate system is vast, complex, and intricately interrelated. Many areas are influenced by global-scale phenomena, including the “triple dip” La Niña conditions that prevailed in the eastern Pacific Ocean nearly continuously from mid-2020 through all of 2022; by regional phenomena such as the positive winter and summer North Atlantic Oscillation that impacted weather in parts the Northern Hemisphere and the negative Indian Ocean dipole that impacted weather in parts of the Southern Hemisphere; and by more localized systems such as high-pressure heat domes that caused extreme heat in different areas of the world. Underlying all these natural short-term variabilities are long-term climate trends due to continuous increases since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the atmospheric concentrations of Earth’s major greenhouse gases. In 2022, the annual global average carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere rose to 417.1±0.1 ppm, which is 50% greater than the pre-industrial level. Global mean tropospheric methane abundance was 165% higher than its pre-industrial level, and nitrous oxide was 24% higher. All three gases set new record-high atmospheric concentration levels in 2022. Sea-surface temperature patterns in the tropical Pacific characteristic of La Niña and attendant atmospheric patterns tend to mitigate atmospheric heat gain at the global scale, but the annual global surface temperature across land and oceans was still among the six highest in records dating as far back as the mid-1800s. It was the warmest La Niña year on record. Many areas observed record or near-record heat. Europe as a whole observed its second-warmest year on record, with sixteen individual countries observing record warmth at the national scale. Records were shattered across the continent during the summer months as heatwaves plagued the region. On 18 July, 104 stations in France broke their all-time records. One day later, England recorded a temperature of 40°C for the first time ever. China experienced its second-warmest year and warmest summer on record. In the Southern Hemisphere, the average temperature across New Zealand reached a record high for the second year in a row. While Australia’s annual temperature was slightly below the 1991–2020 average, Onslow Airport in Western Australia reached 50.7°C on 13 January, equaling Australia's highest temperature on record. While fewer in number and locations than record-high temperatures, record cold was also observed during the year. Southern Africa had its coldest August on record, with minimum temperatures as much as 5°C below normal over Angola, western Zambia, and northern Namibia. Cold outbreaks in the first half of December led to many record-low daily minimum temperature records in eastern Australia. The effects of rising temperatures and extreme heat were apparent across the Northern Hemisphere, where snow-cover extent by June 2022 was the third smallest in the 56-year record, and the seasonal duration of lake ice cover was the fourth shortest since 1980. More frequent and intense heatwaves contributed to the second-greatest average mass balance loss for Alpine glaciers around the world since the start of the record in 1970. Glaciers in the Swiss Alps lost a record 6% of their volume. In South America, the combination of drought and heat left many central Andean glaciers snow free by mid-summer in early 2022; glacial ice has a much lower albedo than snow, leading to accelerated heating of the glacier. Across the global cryosphere, permafrost temperatures continued to reach record highs at many high-latitude and mountain locations. In the high northern latitudes, the annual surface-air temperature across the Arctic was the fifth highest in the 123-year record. The seasonal Arctic minimum sea-ice extent, typically reached in September, was the 11th-smallest in the 43-year record; however, the amount of multiyear ice—ice that survives at least one summer melt season—remaining in the Arctic continued to decline. Since 2012, the Arctic has been nearly devoid of ice more than four years old. In Antarctica, an unusually large amount of snow and ice fell over the continent in 2022 due to several landfalling atmospheric rivers, which contributed to the highest annual surface mass balance, 15% to 16% above the 1991–2020 normal, since the start of two reanalyses records dating to 1980. It was the second-warmest year on record for all five of the long-term staffed weather stations on the Antarctic Peninsula. In East Antarctica, a heatwave event led to a new all-time record-high temperature of −9.4°C—44°C above the March average—on 18 March at Dome C. This was followed by the collapse of the critically unstable Conger Ice Shelf. More than 100 daily low sea-ice extent and sea-ice area records were set in 2022, including two new all-time annual record lows in net sea-ice extent and area in February. Across the world’s oceans, global mean sea level was record high for the 11th consecutive year, reaching 101.2 mm above the 1993 average when satellite altimetry measurements began, an increase of 3.3±0.7 over 2021. Globally-averaged ocean heat content was also record high in 2022, while the global sea-surface temperature was the sixth highest on record, equal with 2018. Approximately 58% of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine heatwave in 2022. In the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand’s longest continuous marine heatwave was recorded. A total of 85 named tropical storms were observed during the Northern and Southern Hemisphere storm seasons, close to the 1991–2020 average of 87. There were three Category 5 tropical cyclones across the globe—two in the western North Pacific and one in the North Atlantic. This was the fewest Category 5 storms globally since 2017. Globally, the accumulated cyclone energy was the lowest since reliable records began in 1981. Regardless, some storms caused massive damage. In the North Atlantic, Hurricane Fiona became the most intense and most destructive tropical or post-tropical cyclone in Atlantic Canada’s history, while major Hurricane Ian killed more than 100 people and became the third costliest disaster in the United States, causing damage estimated at $113 billion U.S. dollars. In the South Indian Ocean, Tropical Cyclone Batsirai dropped 2044 mm of rain at Commerson Crater in Réunion. The storm also impacted Madagascar, where 121 fatalities were reported. As is typical, some areas around the world were notably dry in 2022 and some were notably wet. In August, record high areas of land across the globe (6.2%) were experiencing extreme drought. Overall, 29% of land experienced moderate or worse categories of drought during the year. The largest drought footprint in the contiguous United States since 2012 (63%) was observed in late October. The record-breaking megadrought of central Chile continued in its 13th consecutive year, and 80-year record-low river levels in northern Argentina and Paraguay disrupted fluvial transport. In China, the Yangtze River reached record-low values. Much of equatorial eastern Africa had five consecutive below-normal rainy seasons by the end of 2022, with some areas receiving record-low precipitation totals for the year. This ongoing 2.5-year drought is the most extensive and persistent drought event in decades, and led to crop failure, millions of livestock deaths, water scarcity, and inflated prices for staple food items. In South Asia, Pakistan received around three times its normal volume of monsoon precipitation in August, with some regions receiving up to eight times their expected monthly totals. Resulting floods affected over 30 million people, caused over 1700 fatalities, led to major crop and property losses, and was recorded as one of the world’s costliest natural disasters of all time. Near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Petrópolis received 530 mm in 24 hours on 15 February, about 2.5 times the monthly February average, leading to the worst disaster in the city since 1931 with over 230 fatalities. On 14–15 January, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai submarine volcano in the South Pacific erupted multiple times. The injection of water into the atmosphere was unprecedented in both magnitude—far exceeding any previous values in the 17-year satellite record—and altitude as it penetrated into the mesosphere. The amount of water injected into the stratosphere is estimated to be 146±5 Terragrams, or ∼10% of the total amount in the stratosphere. It may take several years for the water plume to dissipate, and it is currently unknown whether this eruption will have any long-term climate effect.

Abstract: Many single-output regression problems require estimates of uncertainty along with the point predictions. For this purpose, there exists a class of regression algorithms that predict a conditional distribution rather than a point estimate. The off-the-shelf options are much more limited, however, when the prediction output is multivariate and a joint measure of uncertainty is required. In this paper, we predict a distribution around a multivariate random vector of dimension P , such that the joint uncertainty would quantify the probability of any vector in P -dimensional space. This is more expressive than providing separate uncertainties in each dimension. To enable joint probabilistic regression, we propose a natural gradient boosting approach based on nonparametrically modeling the conditional parameters of the multivariate predictive distribution, where we focus on the multivariate Gaussian distribution. Our method is robust, can be easily trained without extensive tuning, and performs competitively in comparison to existing approaches. The motivating application of our methodology is to predict two-dimensional oceanographic currents measured by freely floating Global Drifter Program drifters using remotely sensed data. We also demonstrate the method’s performance on simulated data. We find this method excels when strong correlation between output dimensions is present. As part of this work, we have added the model to the open source package at github.com/stanfordmlgroup/ngboost.

Abstract: AG10 is a novel, potent, and selective oral transthyretin (TTR) stabilizer being developed to treat TTR amyloidosis (ATTR). This randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled study evaluated safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics (ex vivo stabilization) of orally administered AG10 in healthy adult volunteers. Both mutant and wild‐type ATTR are underdiagnosed diseases with limited therapeutic options. As TTR amyloidogenesis is initiated by dissociation of TTR tetramers destabilized due to inherited mutations or aging, AG10 is designed to treat the disease at its source. Four single and three multiple ascending dose levels of AG10 or matching placebo were orally administered. Safety and tolerability were assessed by vital signs, electrocardiogram, adverse events, and clinical laboratory tests. Pharmacokinetics were measured using a validated bioanalytical assay. Pharmacodynamics were assessed via three pharmacodynamic assays of TTR stabilization. AG10 was uniformly well tolerated, and no safety signals of clinical concern were observed. Pharmacokinetic observations included time to maximum concentration 〈 1 hour, dose‐dependent maximum concentration and area under the plasma concentration–time curve, low intersubject variability, and half‐life ∼25 hr. Complete ( 〉 90%) stabilization of TTR was observed across the entire dosing interval at steady state on the highest dose tested. Serum TTR levels, an in vivo reflection of TTR stabilization by AG10, increased from baseline following 12 days of dosing. AG10 appears to be safe and well tolerated in healthy adult volunteers and can completely stabilize TTR across the dosing interval, establishing clinical proof of concept. Based on these data, AG10 has the potential to be a safe and effective treatment for patients with either mutant or wild‐type ATTR.

Abstract: The Tropical Atlantic Ocean has recently been the source of enormous amounts of floating Sargassum macroalgae that have started to inundate shorelines in the Caribbean, the western coast of Africa and northern Brazil. It is still unclear, however, how the surface currents carry the Sargassum , largely restricted to the upper meter of the ocean, and whether observed surface drifter trajectories and hydrodynamical ocean models can be used to simulate its pathways. Here, we analyze a dataset of two types of surface drifters (38 in total), purposely deployed in the Tropical Atlantic Ocean in July, 2019. Twenty of the surface drifters were undrogued and reached only ∼8 cm into the water, while the other 18 were standard Surface Velocity Program (SVP) drifters that all had a drogue centered around 15 m depth. We show that the undrogued drifters separate more slowly than the drogued SVP drifters, likely because of the suppressed turbulence due to convergence in wind rows, which was stronger right at the surface than at 15 m depth. Undrogued drifters were also more likely to enter the Caribbean Sea. We also show that the novel Surface and Merged Ocean Currents (SMOC) product from the Copernicus Marine Environmental Service (CMEMS) does not clearly simulate one type of drifter better than the other, highlighting the need for further improvements in assimilated hydrodynamic models in the region, for a better understanding and forecasting of Sargassum drift in the Tropical Atlantic.

Abstract: Properly fitting ocean models to observations is crucial for improving model performance and understanding ocean dynamics. Near-surface velocity measurements from the Global Drifter Program (GDP) contain valuable information about upper-ocean circulation and air–sea fluxes on various space and time scales. This study explores whether GDP measurements can be used for usefully constraining the surface circulation from coarse-resolution ocean models, using global solutions produced by the consortium for Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) as an example. To address this problem, a careful examination of velocity data errors is required. Comparisons between an ECCO model simulation, performed without any data constraints, and GDP and Ocean Surface Current Analyses Real-Time (OSCAR) velocity data, over the period 1992–2017, reveal considerable differences in magnitude and pattern. These comparisons are used to estimate GDP data errors in the context of the time-mean and time-variable surface circulations. Both instrumental errors and errors associated with limitations in model physics and resolution (representation errors) are considered. Given the estimated model–data differences, errors, and signal-to-noise ratios, our results indicate that constraining ocean-state estimates to GDP can have a substantial impact on the ECCO large-scale time-mean surface circulation over extensive areas. Impact of GDP data constraints on the ECCO time-variable circulation would be weaker and mainly limited to low latitudes. Representation errors contribute substantially to degrading the data impacts.

Abstract: The years since 2000 have been a golden age in in situ ocean observing with the proliferation and organization of autonomous platforms such as surface drogued buoys and subsurface Argo profiling floats augmenting ship-based observations. Global time series of mean sea surface temperature and ocean heat content are routinely calculated based on data from these platforms, enhancing our understanding of the ocean’s role in Earth’s climate system. Individual measurements of meteorological, sea surface, and subsurface variables directly improve our understanding of the Earth system, weather forecasting, and climate projections. They also provide the data necessary for validating and calibrating satellite observations. Maintaining this ocean observing system has been a technological, logistical, and funding challenge. The global COVID-19 pandemic, which took hold in 2020, added strain to the maintenance of the observing system. A survey of the contributing components of the observing system illustrates the impacts of the pandemic from January 2020 through December 2021. The pandemic did not reduce the short-term geographic coverage (days to months) capabilities mainly due to the continuation of autonomous platform observations. In contrast, the pandemic caused critical loss to longer-term (years to decades) observations, greatly impairing the monitoring of such crucial variables as ocean carbon and the state of the deep ocean. So, while the observing system has held under the stress of the pandemic, work must be done to restore the interrupted replenishment of the autonomous components and plan for more resilient methods to support components of the system that rely on cruise-based measurements.

Abstract: Abstract We propose to establish a new ocean observing system for monitoring global and regional mean sea-level changes. This system will consist of a global array of thousands of water-following drifting buoys tracked by a global navigation satellite system—such as the Global Positioning System (GPS)—which will continuously provide the geographical positions and the height of the sea surface along the buoys' trajectories. The sea-level height data collected in this way, averaged over regional basins and the global ocean, will provide daily measures of regional and global mean sea levels. An essential climate variable, mean sea level is an intrinsic measure of climate change, integrating the thermal expansion of the ocean's waters and additions to the ocean's mass from melting terrestrial ice. The realization of this new system requires that standardized vertical position measurements with controlled accuracy be acquired and regularly transmitted from relatively small and expendable drifting buoys, which constitutes a technological challenge, yet one with a clear path for being met. The development and implementation of this ocean shot concept will ultimately provide an independent, resilient, sustainable, and economical observational system to quantify natural and anthropogenic sea-level changes, augmenting the existing satellites and tide gauge observing systems.