01.03.2013 Views

International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

78<br />

IPY 20 07–20 08<br />

<strong>International</strong> <strong>Polar</strong> <strong>Year</strong>, if it would focus on global<br />

change. It asked CliC to organize preparations within<br />

WCRP, taking into account the interests of all relevant<br />

projects and working groups, and represent WCRP in<br />

corresponding discussions. WCRP- and CliC-affiliated<br />

specialists took an active role in the discussions of<br />

the IPY concept and agenda, both at national and<br />

international arenas, and within ICSU and <strong>WMO</strong> circles.<br />

A discussion paper on WCRP’s contribution to IPY was<br />

prepared and submitted to the ICSU IPY Planning<br />

Group and two scientists associated with WCRP, Ian<br />

Allison and Vladimir Kotlyakov were invited to serve<br />

on the IPY Planning Group in 2003–2004.<br />

In 2004, WCRP projects and working groups were<br />

asked by the JSC to consider how their activities might<br />

benefit from WCRP participation in IPY <strong>2007–2008</strong>. The<br />

25th Session of the WCRP JSC (Moscow, March 2004)<br />

noted the leading role played by the CliC project,<br />

on behalf of WCRP, in the development of plans for<br />

IPY and requested CliC to continue playing this role<br />

for WCRP, keeping all other relevant parts of WCRP<br />

informed.<br />

The main ideas expressed by WCRP/CliC representatives<br />

at the time were focused on creating a dataset of<br />

multidisciplinary and multi-scale observations in the<br />

polar atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land that<br />

would be instrumental for diagnostics of the state of<br />

the polar climate system and would enable its comprehensive<br />

modeling and prediction. The abilities to scale<br />

observations up and down and provide a coherent description<br />

of the climate system were deemed important.<br />

The WCRP/GEWEX CEOP (Coordinated Enhanced<br />

Observing Period) project was seen at that time as a<br />

model for such combined observing and modeling activity.<br />

In the early WCRP statements on IPY <strong>2007–2008</strong>,<br />

a strong requirement was also expressed on the need<br />

to have a comprehensive data management system.<br />

The ACSYS Data and Information Service (ADIS), which<br />

at the time was being reviewed with an intention to<br />

propose a Data and Information Service for CliC (DISC)<br />

was offered as a prototype. The input from the WCRP<br />

community, such as ideas expressed at several Open<br />

IPY Forums, was taken into account in the IPY Framework<br />

document (Rapley et al., 2004) produced by the<br />

IPY Planning Group, including its data management<br />

part. Four scientists associated with WCRP, Ian Allison,<br />

Eberhard Fahrbach, Vladimir Kotlyakov and Qin Dahe,<br />

were invited to serve on the IPY Joint Committee (JC),<br />

and Ian Allison became one of its Co-Chairs.<br />

Responding to the IPY JC call for the proposals<br />

for IPY <strong>2007–2008</strong> (‘Expressions of Intent’ – EoI) in<br />

November 2004, WCRP issued its internal call for<br />

ideas for IPY projects. Approximately 100 ideas<br />

associated with WCRP activities were put forward,<br />

and among them approximately twenty major “preproposals”<br />

were submitted to the IPY JC. In May 2005,<br />

the Integrated Global Observing Strategy (IGOS)<br />

Partnership endorsed the IGOS Cryosphere Theme<br />

Report prepared by WCRP and SCAR, which proposed<br />

a community-consensus based approach to the<br />

development of cryospheric observations. The work<br />

on this report resulted in the proposal of the Global<br />

Interagency IPY <strong>Polar</strong> Snapshot <strong>Year</strong> (GIIPSY) proposal,<br />

which subsequently led to the establishment of the<br />

IPY Space Task Group.<br />

WCRP and its projects became a leading<br />

international agency of 23 major IPY <strong>2007–2008</strong><br />

projects. Twelve other projects were related to WCRP<br />

or one of its projects. Almost all of the WCRP- and<br />

project-related proposals were endorsed by the IPY<br />

JC. It is clear that climate research strongly shaped the<br />

IPY science agenda.<br />

<strong>International</strong> Arctic Social Science<br />

Association (IASSA)<br />

Igor Krupnik and Yvon Csonka<br />

IASSA (established in 1990) was among the last<br />

major professional polar organizations to endorse IPY<br />

<strong>2007–2008</strong> and to join its planning process in springsummer<br />

2004. The 300-to-400-strong association<br />

of scientists in the fields of arctic human and social<br />

sciences (anthropology, history, sociology, economy,<br />

archaeology, linguistics) was not a member of the ICSU-<br />

<strong>WMO</strong> network, though it had established relations<br />

with IASC and the Arctic Council, in its capacity as<br />

permanent observer and via its collaboration in Arctic<br />

Human Development Report (2002-2004), ICARP-2<br />

and other cross-disciplinary polar programs. IASSA’s<br />

entry was, nonetheless, a significant event, as it finally<br />

shaped the broad integrative nature of the new IPY,<br />

and its openness to the human and socio-cultural<br />

themes.<br />

Several early IPY planning documents generated by

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!