Scientists from Delft University and the research institute Deltares talking with CBS News reporters at the AGU Fall Meeting. Their research, showing that inmates who escaped from Alcatraz in 1962 had a small chance of surviving, garnered worldwide media attention and was among dozens of news stories to come out of the December meeting. Credit: Mary Catherine Adams

News that the Arctic continues to warm, the 1962 Alcatraz escapees could have survived, and there’s methane on Mars was unveiled at the 2014 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting.

In addition, more than 140 journalists from around the world reported on the latest findings about the California drought, the Greenland ice sheet, and the Rosetta mission, among other new scientific discoveries. At last count, more than 4100 news stories were generated about science presented at the Fall Meeting, due in part to the 23 press conferences and workshops organized by AGU’s Public Information Office.

The AGU Blogosphere ran more than 40 posts related to the Fall Meeting, including more than 25 stories by students from the science communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. These guest bloggers, reporting for AGU’s blog GeoSpace, scoured the poster hall and scientific sessions for news about volcanoes, planets, the ocean, and other Earth and space science topics.

Some of the top headlines to come out of last year’s Fall Meeting include:

Hundreds of media outlets carried news from the meeting, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Associated Press, Agence France Presse, BBC News, CBS News, National Geographic, Science Magazine, Scientific American, The Christian Science Monitor, Climate Central, Mashable, and Wired.

—Nanci Bompey, Public Information Specialist and Writer, AGU; email: [email protected]

Citation: Bompey, N. (2015), Fall Meeting science makes headlines, Eos, 96, doi:10.1029/2015EO023559. Published on 9 February 2015.

AGU Thanks Fall Meeting Sponsors

AGU thanks all of our generous sponsors whose sponsorships helped support the 2014 Fall Meeting and the events at the meeting.

Text © 2015. The authors. CC BY-NC 3.0
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