Credit: © tashatuvango – stock.adobe.com

2016 was another busy year in the Earth and space sciences.

We saw discoveries of gravitational waves and more exoplanets, dramatic changes in the Arctic, the successful orbit of Juno around Jupiter, and the coming into force of the Paris climate accord. The year also saw reductions in funding for state geological surveys, the first glimpse of solar wind formation, results of energy and environment issues on the ballots in the U.S. election, and the selection of the second consecutive geoscientist to head the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

In March 2016, Eos magazine received a gold medal from Association Trends for Most Improved Magazine or Journal.
In March 2016, Eos magazine received a gold medal from Association Trends for Most Improved Magazine or Journal following the transition from the weekly tabloid. Credit: Association Trends

So what did Eos.org readers click on most?  Here are our most-read articles published in 2016:

  1. Aging Stars Make New Habitable Zones (News)
  2. The Geomagnetic Blitz of September 1941 (Feature)
  3. A Hole in Earth’s Surface (Research Spotlight)
  4. Here Comes the Anthropocene (Editors’ Vox)
  5. Massive Ancient Tectonic Slab Found Below the Indian Ocean (Research Spotlight)
  6. AGU Opens Its Journals to Author Identifiers (AGU News)
  7. Pharaoh’s Iron Dagger Made from a Meteorite, Study Confirms (News)
  8. We Need a New Definition for “Magma” (Opinion)
  9. 2016 Class of AGU Fellows Announced (AGU News)
  10. Mysterious Anomaly Interrupts Stratospheric Wind Pattern (Research Spotlight)

For perspective, the top story listed above had 49,113 page views. Number 10 had 8079 page views.

In addition, 2016 was a banner year for the Eos.org website and the Eos magazine.

The Eos.org website, which typically publishes between two and four new articles every weekday except holidays, now has almost 1 million users. Moreover, the number of sessions increased 85% in 2016 over 2015.

Eos took home three awards at the Association Media & Publishing EXCEL Awards ceremony in June 2016.
Eos took home three awards at the Association Media & Publishing EXCEL Awards ceremony in June 2016. Credit: Barb Richman

The magazine, which is available to all AGU members, publishes a subset of the articles that were published online earlier. In 2016, the magazine received a gold medal from Association Trends for Most Improved Magazine or Journal. We also received gold and bronze EXCEL awards from Association Media & Publishing (AM&P) for best photographic covers in our press run category and a silver medal from AM&P for the feature article on earthquake preparedness in Los Angeles.

To get the latest Earth and space science news, bookmark Eos.org, sign up for the Eos Buzz newsletter, and sign up for e-alerts.

—Barbara T. Richman (email: brichman@agu.org), Editor in Chief, Eos

Citation:

Richman, B. T. (2017), Top 10 Eos.org articles of 2016, Eos, 98, https://doi.org/10.1029/2017EO066111. Published on 10 January 2017.

Text © 2017. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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