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The frequency of compound hydrometeorological extremes over the western US is linked to the location of Madden Julian Oscillation activity as well as ENSO, according to an analysis of observations, which may open up an avenue for predictability.

Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

Many viral vaccine antigen candidates are transmembrane glycoproteins, and their development requires methods which allow their biophysical characterization. Here authors present an optimized nanodisc assembly platform which provides reproducible, scalable, and accurate replication of the vaccine candidates for detailed analysis.

An extended nonlinear recharge oscillator model shows skilful and explainable El Niño–Southern Oscillation forecasts at lead times up to 16–18 months, better than global climate models and comparable to the most skilful artificial intelligence forecasts.

Different functional variants in ADH1B (and elsewhere) in Europeans and Africans strongly affect risk for alcohol dependence. Dependence only partly genetically correlates with consumption, with strong correlations to other psychiatric disorders.

Microbial redox activity within microniches around ichthyosaur carcasses enabled their exceptional three-dimensional preservation within carbonate concretions during the Early Jurassic, based on organic and inorganic geochemical analyses.

Since the 1980s, rapid warming of the Indo-Pacific warm pool has altered global rainfall pattern by changing the residence time of the Madden–Julian Oscillation, decreasing it by 3–4 days over the Indian Ocean and increasing it over the Indo-Pacific by 5–6 days.

Increasing zonal asymmetry in tropical precipitation is projected by 2100, with increases over Asian and African forests and decreases over South American forests. Plant physiological responses to increasing CO₂ are now identified as a primary driving mechanism.

Impacts from marine heatwaves can be devastating, but understanding their causes is largely based on case studies. Here the authors carry out a global assessment of literature and sea surface temperatures to identify important local processes, climate modes and teleconnections that drive marine heatwaves regionally.

Timothy Frayling, Joel Hirschhorn, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for adult height in 253,288 individuals. They identify 697 variants in 423 loci significantly associated with adult height and find that these variants cluster in pathways involved in growth and together explain one-fifth of the heritability for this trait.

In a first-in-human phase 1/2 study in seven patients with sickle cell disease, autologous hematopoietic stem cell lentiviral gene therapy using reduced-intensity conditioning was considered feasible and safe, achieving >80% reduction in the frequency of vaso-occlusive events.

This study shows that the predictability of Central Pacific ENSO will be suppressed in response to global warming, driven by the faster warming over surface ocean in tropical Pacific and a consequent enhanced thermodynamical damping.

Initialized climate predictions offer distinct benefits for multiple stakeholders. This Review discusses initialized prediction on subseasonal to seasonal (S2S), seasonal to interannual (S2I) and seasonal to decadal (S2D) timescales, highlighting potential for skilful predictions in the years to come.

Continuously evolving computational methods are crucial to improve our understanding of the thermophysical properties of molten salts, which are experimentally hard to probe but used widely from steel manufacturing to solar power generation. Here, the authors review computational method developments from early simulations to current machine learning tools, and conclude with an outlook on the challenges molten salt simulations still pose.

Just under a year ago the El Niño of 1997-98 came to an end. By several measures it was the strongest ever documented. But why was this El Niño so strong? Attempts to provide an answer must grapple with a variety of possible contributory causes on timescales ranging from the seasonal to the centennial.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis of individuals with clinically assessed or self-reported depression identifies 44 independent risk loci. Comparisons with other psychiatric disorders and candidate gene analyses provide new insights into major depressive disorder.

A genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI) detects 97 BMI-associated loci, of which 56 were novel, and many loci have effects on other metabolic phenotypes; pathway analyses implicate the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and new pathways such as those related to synaptic function, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.

Erik Ingelsson and colleagues report a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis for associations to the extremes of anthropometric traits, including body mass index, height, waist-to-hip ratio and clinical obesity. They identify four loci newly associated with height and seven loci newly associated with clinical obesity and find overlap in the genetic structure and distribution of variants identified for these extremes of the trait distributions and for the general population.

Stimuli-responsive porous materials are attractive for a range of applications, but each material typically exhibits only one type of transformation. Here, the authors report on a metal–organic material that exhibits six distinct phases as a result of four types of structural transformation in response to different stimuli.

CYP5122A1 is a sterol C4-methyl oxidase that catalyzes the sequential oxidation of lanosterol, is essential for both Leishmania donovani promastigotes in culture and intracellular amastigotes in infected mice, and provides a new target for antileishmanial drug discovery.

Fire is an important component of many African ecosystems, but prediction of fire activity is challenging. Here, the authors use a statistical framework to assess the seasonal environmental drivers of African fire, which allow for a better prediction of fire activity.

There is strong genetic evidence for cigarette smoking behaviors, yet little is known on nicotine dependence (ND). Here, the authors perform a genome-wide association study on ND in 58,000 smokers, identifying five genome-wide significant loci.

A natural product containing an acylsulfenic acid functional group was discovered in a marine Streptomyces bacterium. Its biosynthesis is orchestrated by enzymes from both primary and secondary metabolism, including a flavin-dependent S-hydroxylase. The prevalence of enzymes catalysing the production of acylsulfenic acid in bacteria implies a potentially broad distribution of this functional group in specialized metabolites.

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern are less susceptible to therapeutic neutralizing antibodies, given mutations in the surface glycoprotein S. Here, Case et al. show that therapeutic antibodies S309 and AZD7442 reduce lung infection with SARSCoV-2 Omicron lineages in humanized mouse model despite the loss of neutralizing potency in vitro.

The Consortium on Asthma among African-ancestry Populations in the Americas (CAAPA) aims to better understand population genetics of the African diaspora. Here, it uses deeply sequenced whole-genomes to describe the impact of admixture and potential disease burden of deleterious variants.

Data from over 700,000 individuals reveal the identity of 83 sequence variants that affect human height, implicating new candidate genes and pathways as being involved in growth.