The world's biggest gathering of geophysicists—the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting—happens every December in San Francisco, and using the simple online techniques on page 1 I can make predictions of the major news stories to come out of it. So here goes. In November 1997 I challenged myself to forecast the top 10 stories from that year's AGU meeting.
Actually I think that there are more like 20, but I tried to pick stories that will appear on television, newspapers, and the newsweeklies during the week of the meeting and shortly after. These days it's extremely easy to follow all the news at once using Google News. Just click to the Science section and look for science stories that mention sources in San Francisco. (Search for the two words "scientist" and "francisco" to catch almost all of them.) Chances are good that they'll be referring to the AGU Fall Meeting.
All right? Here's what my crystal ball (and a browse through the abstracts at the AGU site) shows me, roughly in chronological order. This list is untouched since 1997.
- Geologists are finding new evidence that earthquakes and other natural disasters destroyed ancient civilizations.
- Beautiful new images of sprites (ionospheric lightning) have been collected, and theories of their behavior and their role in the global electrical circuit are improving.
- Mars Pathfinder data point to ancient rains, floods, and seas on the Red Planet billions of years ago.
- The Earth has been tilting on its axis in "true polar wander" much more than any scientist thought before.
- Evidence shows that disruptions in ocean currents have caused wild climate swings in the last 10,000 years, a period once considered fairly calm and equable.
- The Galileo spacecraft continues to return data on the four major moons of Jupiter that has scientists happily scratching their heads.
- Satellites now can be, and should be used to monitor volcanic eruptions anywhere on Earth in near-real time.
- Climatologists are closing in on tests to determine what's causing global warming—us or something else.
- The current El Niño will trigger outbreaks of disease and other health problems around the world.
- Networks and intelligent sensors are making real-time earthquake warnings (up to a minute before the shaking arrives) more reliable, widespread, and routine.
If some of these stories don't get any coverage, I'll write them up myself. And if they all get coverage, then I'll tell you about some cool stuff that the reporters missed.
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