Short answers, pulled from the story.
The American Geophysical Union established Terrestrial Magnetism as the first publication in 1896. The journal changed its name to Journal of Geophysical Research in 1948 after a fifty-year period.
Editors launched Space Physics, Solid Earth, and Oceans sections in 1980. Atmospheres joined in 1984, Planets arrived in 1991, Earth Surface opened in 2003, and Biogeosciences completed the set in 2005.
The President of the American Geophysical Union appoints every editor directly. These leaders serve fixed terms ranging from three to four years before review.
Journal Citation Reports assigned an impact factor of 3.303 to the main title in 2010. This score placed the work at 15th position out of 165 journals in Geosciences Multidisciplinary.
A specific subset titled Journal of Geophysical Research, Atmospheres achieved significant recognition during that period. It ranked as the 6th most cited publication on climate change from 1999 through 2009.