10 November 2010
WASHINGTON—Climate scientist-members of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) have organized a Climate Q&A Service to provide timely scientific answers to journalists reporting on climate.
Approximately 700 Ph.D.-level climate scientists, who represent the diversity of climate science-related disciplines, have volunteered to receive and respond to questions via a shared e-mail in-box. Teams of up to10 scientists at a time have signed up for shifts from Monday to Friday, 8AM–4PM (Pacific Time).
Scientist-volunteers in AGU’s Climate Q&A Service will field questions about climate science (not policy) that are e-mailed to [email protected], an e-mail box set up specifically for the project. Responses to questions will be returned in a timely fashion with regard for journalists’ deadlines. Answers will reflect the responding scientists’ research and views. They do not represent official positions of the AGU, the world’s largest organization of Earth and space scientists.
The service is an extended pilot project and will operate from today through at least the third week of January. This project is building off the success of last year’s 10-day pilot program that coincided with the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Last year, 54 climate science inquiries were received from 27 media outlets, including Newsweek, National Public Radio, and the UK Sunday Times. This year’s extended pilot will run for a significantly longer period and will seek increased visibility and use by journalists. AGU will collect data on requests and responses and solicit feedback from participants in order to evaluate the service.
If you have climate science questions, please e-mail them to [email protected]. For more information about the service, visit and bookmark the project’s mobile-device-friendly website. From there, you can download a free widget for submitting questions to the service, which can be easily embedded on a web page.
AGU is a not-for-profit, professional, scientific organization with more than 58,000 members in over 135 countries. The organization advances the Earth and space sciences through its scholarly publications, conferences, and outreach programs. AGU is accessible on the Web. The Climate Q&A Service email box operates on a platform provided by Palo Alto Software of Eugene, Oregon.