Good morning! While the calendar says this is the last day of 2024, the Earth’s seasons, weather and climate won’t notice as the atmosphere/ocean system operates on a multitude of time scales. Of course, the annual cycle is important for renewal and wiping the slate clean in some respects. Heat is removed from the oceans in the middle-latitudes through radiational cooling to the atmosphere above helping to fuel storms. While we experience [extreme] weather on shorter time scales from hours, days to maybe a week, the ocean operates much slower with a longer memory.

I am fascinated with climate variability and believe that much progress will be made with A.I. tools in the coming few years to better understand the year-to-year changes we experience like El Nino, volcanic eruptions, and Pacific/Atlantic multidecadal variability.