Leading climate tweeps

I enjoy Twitter and lately I went a bit overboard searching for people to follow. I discovered that Twitter sets a ceiling on how many people you can follow, which varies based on how many people follow you, but they won't tell you what the equation is. So I had to go back and un-follow some accounts I either found were tweeting far too little, or that I forgot why I followed them originally.

One group I've been searching out to follow is those who work in climate science, paleoclimate and paleoecology, glaciology and ice stuff, remote sensing - all that good stuff I've been reading and attending classes and guest lectures on for several years now.

I found some names I knew, then looked at who they follow, found some more names I recognized, and this week I went through my "following" list looking to see who I'd latched onto in this area. I was pleasantly surprised as I discovered quite a few very prominent names in the field are tweeting now. Here are some of the top names I found - please tweet or email me to suggest more tweeps!

Click the links to go to their Twitter profile - where you can click "Follow"

 (follower stats as of 2012-12-10 except the later additions as of add date):

IPCC-specific:

@IPCC_CH  The IPCC's twitter feed (followed by 2342)
@Cfigueres UNFCC Executive Secretary Dr. Christina Figueres (followed by 12046)
@pwatkinson Head climate negotiator for France (followed by 782)
@JPvanYpersele IPCC vice-chair (followed by 119)

climate leaders:

@MichaelEMann Univ. of Pennsylvania, realclimate.org (followed by 6388)
@HeidiCullen climate scientist, science journalist (followed by 4087)
@GlobalEcoGuy Johnathan Foley, Director, Institute on the Environment (IonE), Univ. Minnesota (followed by 3030)
@rjtklein Richard Klein, Climate policy analyst at SEI and CSPR, IPCC author (followed by 2606)
@KenCaldeira senior climate scientist Stanford U. (followed by 2351)
@dr_andy_russell Lecturer in Climate Change at @Brunel_IfE (followed by 1920)
@richardabetts  Climate scientist, Met Office Hadley Centre and Exeter University. IPCC AR5 Lead Author (followed by 1778)
@AGW_Prof  Prof. Scott A. Mandia - SUNY Suffolk, founder of Climate Science Rapid Response Team
@PaulREhrlich population ecologist (followed by 1115)
@climate_ice Prof. Jason Box, Ohio State U. - "Mister Cryosphere" (followed by 1010)
@rahmstorf Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf - PIK, realclimate.org (followed by 738)
@popepolar Dr. Allen Pope (followed by 736)
@TusconPeck  Johnathan Overpeck (followed by 726)
@SimonLLewis (followed by 652)
@TheCostOfEnergy Lou Grinzo (followed by 648)
@simondonner Simon Donner, Univ. of British Columbia (followed by 643)
@BrianBledsoe (followed by 637)
@ed_hawkins (followed by 584)
@AJWVictoriaBC Dr. Andrew Weavers FCMOS FAMS - UBC (followed by 491)
@SMEasterbrook Prof. Steve Easterbrook - Univ. of Toronto (hi Steve!) (followed by 388)
@ClimateOfGavin Dr. Gavin Schmidt - GISS, realclimate.org (followed by 368)
@AlanRobock Dr. Alan Robock - Rutgers U (followed by 214) [added to this list 2013-06]
@NeilAdger - Univ. of Exeter (followed by193)
@vickypope2 UK Met Office (followed by 111)
@ericsteig - realclimate.org (followed by 54)
@climatebook Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert FAGU - Univ. of Chicago, realclimate.org (twitter feed for his textbook - followed by 46)
@mcmaccracken Dr. Mike MacCracken FAAAS, IAMAS, ICIA (followed by 43)
@BarryBickmore1 Brigham Young U. (followed by 37) 
@rikleemans Vageningen U (followed by 14)

While I've sorted these by current number of followers, that's sometimes quite different from the order you'll find them on my table of most highly-cited authors on climate science. Some of the most highly cited who could use some more love on Twitter in proportion to their publication record are Neil Adger, Mike McCracken, and Rik Leemans -- but everyone here is well worth following, so don't be shy!

UPDATE 2013-06-25:

I somehow overlooked @AlanRobock at time of writing, so I've just added him. I gmailed his name this morning, and when I logged in to Twitter just now it suggested I follow him. Coincidence, or spooky SEO? You decide...

UPDATE#2, 2013-08-07:

Just noticed two more important names in climate science now on twitter:

@PdeMenocal Peter DeMenocal of Lamont-Doherty at Columbia (followed by 141)

@moraymo Maureen Raymo of Lamont-Doherty at Columbia (followed by 189)

UPDATE#3, 2014-01-17

Some more key climate scientists now on Twitter:
@OveHG Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of U. Queensland (followed by 503)

@ClimateOpp Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton (followed by 437)

UPDATE#4 2014-05-23

The follower counts posted above will be way out of date by now, but I don't have spare time to go back through the whole list and update them. Anyway, I'm adding one more update for Naomi Oreskes who just joined Twitter, along with some important names in #scicomms and climate politics/public understanding of science research:
@NaomiOreskes Naomi Oreskes of Harvard (followed by 422 after just one week and 12 tweets - got some good early #FFs)
@skepticscience John Cook of U.Queensland (followed by 9211)
@ChrisCMooney of MotherJones and ClimateDesk (followed by 12.3K)
@Boykoff Max Boykoff of CIRES CSTPR, Boulder, CO (followed by 1392)
@STWorg Shaping Tomorrow's World team, led by Stephan Lewandowsky of U Bristol (followed by 598)
@ecotone2 Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale PCCC (followed by 582)
@AaronMcCright Aaron McCright of MSU (followed by 391)

Also some climate science aware journalists worth a follow:

@georgemonbiot George Monbiot of The Guardian (followed by 92.5K)

@DVergano Dan Vergano of National Geographic (followed by 13K)

@ElaineMcKewon Elaine McKewon journalism PhD cand., Syndey, AU (followed by 295)