AGU Fall Meeting Attracts Nearly 20,000 Scientists

It's December and if you're in San Francisco you might be one of the nearly 20,000 scientists attending the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the worldwide scientific organization of mostly earth and space scientists (aka geoscientists).  From December 13-17th they will gather to present - and listen to - over 18,000 platform and poster presentations on the science.  For anyone who has never been to a scientific meeting before, this is what science is about when you get out of your lab or field site.  Knowledge.

With the Cancun climate meetings just wrapping up, the AGU meeting is guaranteed to have many animated discussions about science related to climate.  Scientists will find out what others have been working on, argue with each other in the hallways, and yes, laugh about the good old days back in the stone ages.

As big as this meeting is (and it's not even the biggest scientific meeting), only about a third of the worldwide membership will be able to attend.  According to its web site, "AGU membership encompasses more than 58,000 individuals from over 135 countries."  The goal of membership "is to unite Earth, atmospheric, oceanic, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists by providing a dynamic forum for the geophysical community through scientific journals, meetings, electronic mail, a weekly newspaper, scientific and technical committee activities, and several online data and information services."

In other words, a way to share information about new discoveries, new data, and potential areas of further research.

Information about the fall meeting can be found here.  A PDF of the program book can be downloaded here (warning: it's 123 MB so takes a while to download).