HYGEOS contributed to the BAMS State of the Climate in 2022.

An international, peer-reviewed publication released each summer, the State of the Climate is the authoritative annual summary of the global climate published as a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The report, compiled by NOAA’s Centers for Environmental Information, is based on contributions from scientists around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, atmospheric composition and others. The report can be found here.

HYGEOS contributed to the aerosol section, with the help of scientists from ECMWF, the University of Reading and IPSL, and using data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) Reanalysis. The 2022 Aerosol Optical Depth was much less impacted by large fire events than in 2021. Positive anomalies due to fires are found above parts of the Amazon basin, following an active fire season in July and August 2022, and parts of Alaska. South Africa also experienced exceptional fires from the end of July to early October, which led to a large positive Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) anomaly. Dust storm activity was in general lower than usual over most of the Sahara except over its northwest fringe, while the Taklimakan and most of the Arabian Peninsula experienced a higher-than-usual amount of dust. Most of the Southern Hemisphere witnessed a small positive AOD anomaly between January and March 2022 associated with the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai (HTHH) eruption of 13–15 January. This eruption led to the largest stratospheric aerosol disturbance since the June 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption, although HTHH mostly impacted the Southern Hemisphere. Monthly stratospheric AOD increased by 0.05 to 0.1 AOD units over the most affected areas (west of Australia, eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean), where there were also signals in terms of number of extreme AOD days. The negative anomalies of AOD over East Asia, Europe, and the Amazon basin (positive anomalies over India and Iran) are associated with ongoing decreasing (increasing) trends in these regions

Blunden, J., T. Boyer, and E. Bartow-Gillies, Eds., 2023: “State of the Climate in 2022”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 104 (9), Si–S501 https://doi.org/10.1175/2023BAMSStateoftheClimate.1.