Center for Climate Risk Management

Abstract: The inner workings of high-profile journals can be mysterious. How do they decide what to publish, or even to send out to review? How is the process managed? What are the odds of getting published? Do they publish papers only in the interests of being controversial and getting press coverage? And who makes the decisions? Michael White -- Nature’s editor for climate -- discusses the overall journal processes and specific themes behind the climate science research published in Nature over the past 13 years.

Bio: Michael White is Nature’s editor for climate science, handling submissions on atmospheres, oceans, the cryosphere and hydrology – past, present and future, on Earth and other planets. Michael works closely with Nature’s editors for biogeoscience, economics, and ecology and is broadly experienced in interdisciplinary Earth System Science. Before coming to Nature in 2008, Michael was an academic at Utah State University, where he conducted research on land surface phenology and terrestrial biogeochemistry -- mostly using computational models and satellite remote sensing.