2022

2022 (MMXXII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2022nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 22nd year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 3rd year of the 2020s decade.

The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw the removal of most COVID-19 restrictions and the reopening of international borders in the vast majority of countries, while the global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines continued. The global economic recovery from the pandemic continued, though many countries experienced an ongoing inflation surge; in response, many central banks raised their interest rates to landmark levels.^[1] The world population reached eight billion people in 2022. The year also witnessed numerous natural disasters, including two devastating Atlantic hurricanes (Fiona and Ian), and the most powerful volcano eruption of the century so far. The later part of the year also saw the first public release of ChatGPT by OpenAI starting an arms race in artificial intelligence which increased in intensity into 2023, as well as the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

2022 was also dominated by wars and armed conflicts. While escalations into the internal conflict in Myanmar and the Tigray War dominated the heightening of tensions within their regions and each caused over 10,000 deaths, 2022 was most notable for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. The invasion caused the displacement of 15.7 million Ukrainians (8 million internally displaced persons and 7.7 million refugees), and led to international condemnations and sanctions and nuclear threats, the withdrawal of hundreds of companies from Russia, and the exclusion of Russia from major sporting events.