In the February 8, 2016 edition of "This Week in Elasticsearch and Apache Lucene," key updates include the release of Elasticsearch 2.2.0, featuring a query profiler and enhanced geopoint fields, alongside various improvements in the Elasticsearch core, such as better exception handling and the addition of new processors for ingest pipelines. The article also discusses ongoing developments like the reindex API's background operation capability and preparations for the Apache Lucene 5.5.0 release, highlighting the move of postings-based geo point queries to the spatial module for improved performance. Additionally, it outlines various testing and refactoring efforts aimed at enhancing both Elasticsearch and Apache Lucene, such as improving geo math calculations and introducing a utility class for debugging with TokenFilters.