From Earth to Space and Back Again: A Story of Geophysics Told by 130 Years of AGU Article Titles

Abstract

We present an analysis of the most frequent words in journal article titles published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), including articles of its first acquired journal Terrestrial Magnetism (and Atmospheric Physics) from the journal's inception in 1896, before AGU acquired it as Journal of Geophysical Research in 1959. The analysis tells one story of the development of the field of geophysics between 1896 and 2023. This story begins with studying the Earth's magnetic field and the sun's effects on it. Published article content expanded to include Earth's immediate atmosphere and as technology allowed, atmospheric composition further and further from Earth. Around the mid‐twentieth century, geophysics expanded to more rigorously study Earth's aqueous environments, and title words show that geophysicists understood that these environments could tell the story of Earth's past while predicting Earth's future. We group the analysis into multi‐decadal years for the following journals: Terrestrial Magnetism (updated to Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity in 1899 and Journal of Geophysical Research in 1949), (Eos) Transactions (from 1920 to 1959), Reviews of Geophysics, Water Resources Research, Radio Science, Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Tectonics, Paleoceanography, Global Biogeochemical Cycles (GBC), Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (G‐Cubed), Space Weather, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES), JGR: Space Physics, JGR: Solid Earth, JGR: Oceans, JGR: Atmospheres, JGR: Planets, JGR: Earth Surface, JGR: Biogeosciences, Earth's Future, Earth and Space Science, GeoHealth, AGU Advances, Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists, and Community Science.