How Representative are AMS Membership Surveys?

Abstract

s regarding the fractional participation of women in meteorology/atmospheric sciences gathered by the AMS are quite similar to those based on annual National Science Foundation (NSF) surveys. The absolute numbers in the biennial AMS/UCAR survey of academic departments for the Curricula series ceased being useful by around 2005, when many departments stopped participating fully, but numbers from less-frequent direct AMS membership surveys have been increasing. Despite the limitations of the AMS data, the NSF statistics confirm conclusions from an earlier analysis of AMS data. Both numbers and percentages are required to tell the evolving story of the atmospheric sciences' ?pipeline.? Furthermore, after correction of an error regarding the AMS statistics in our 2010 paper, both NSF and AMS data show the same increase in the proportion of women graduate students in the field over the last four decades, as well as an apparent leveling off at approximately one-third.