International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

scientists, like Georg Neumayer (1826–1909), director of
the Deutsche Seewarte/German Maritime Observatory
in Hamburg; Christophorus Buys Ballot (1817–1890),
director of the Dutch Meteorological Institute in
Utrecht; and Heinrich von Wild (1833–1902), director
of the Central Physical Observatory in St. Petersburg,
Russia. They moved it through a respected professional
body, the International Meteorological Congress and
its permanent committee chaired by Buys Ballot, on
which Wild and Neumayer also served (Cannegieter
1963). The Committee approved the idea in principle
in April 1876 (Lüdecke 2004) and referred it to the 2nd
International Meteorological Congress scheduled
for September 1877, at which Weyprecht was invited
to present his proposal in person (Weyprecht and
Wilczek, 1877).
Weyprecht’s plan laid out in 1875 argued for
coordinated polar expeditions to set off in the (boreal)
autumn of 1877. Wild advised Weyprecht to move
its implementation to 1878, so that it could secure
international endorsement at the 2nd Meteorological
Congress; but then the Congress was postponed for
two years, due to the Russian-Turkish (Balkan) War of
1877–1878. Finally, in April 1879, the Congress adopted
Weyprecht’s proposal (Lüdecke, 2004). It also instituted
the International Meteorological Committee, the
executive body for international collaboration in
meteorology that became the precursor of the
International Meteorological Organization and the
actual sponsor of IPY-1 (and, later, of IPY-2).
The Committee was entrusted to convene a special
International Polar Conference for further planning of
the polar year (Cannegieter, 1963). That nine-member
conference, mostly of the directors of respective
national observatories and high-level representatives
of national academies (plus Weyprecht) took place
in Hamburg in October 1879. 6 It constituted an
International Polar Commission (IPC), first chaired by
Neumayer and later by Wild, that became the official
planning and governing body of IPY-1. Weyprecht was
left to propagate his project as a private individual
(Tammiksaar et al., 2010). On 29 March 1881, he died
of tuberculosis, three months prior to the departure of
the first IPY expedition to the field.
Altogether, the International Polar Commission
held five ‘conferences’ following its first meeting in
Hamburg in October 1879: IPC-2 in Bern in August
1880, of nine delegates; IPC-3 in St. Petersburg in
August 1881, of 10 delegates; IPC-4 in Vienna in April
1884, of 20 members (see photo with names in:
Heathcote and Armitage 1959) to honor Weyprecht’s
contribution; and IPC-5 in Munich in September 1891.
The observation period for IPY-1 originally
established at IPC-1 in Hamburg in 1879 was to have
been one year starting in boreal fall 1881; but it was
postponed for one year at IPC-2. New dates, from
1 August 1882 until 31 August 1883, were formally
approved at IPC-3 in 1881 (Sukhova and Tammiksaar,
2008), when two American IPY expeditions were
already in the field. Most of the expeditions left in
May-July 1882 and returned home in September-
November 1883 (Baker, 1982a; Barr, 1985/2008; Barr et
al., 2010; Corby, 1982; Heathcote and Armitage, 1959).
The span of IPY-1 observations was ultimately almost
three years, from (boreal) summer 1881 to summer
1884, when the last expedition, led by Adolphus W.
Greely, was rescued. 7 It is estimated that more than 700
people (all men?) took part in the work of twelve IPY-1
stations in the Arctic (Fig. 1.1-2) and two expeditions
to the Southern Ocean (Fig. 1.1-3). The total at all
locations, including several ‘auxiliary’ missions and
over 40 participating observatories at lower latitudes
was, probably, close to 1,000. 8
The International Polar Commission was dissolved
in 1891, eight years after the completion of IPY
fieldwork. It produced seven Bulletins between 1882
and 1891 containing proceedings, minutes and short
reports from the expeditions. 9 Altogether, it comprised
112 numbered communications in German, French
and English, a total of 363 pages. The Bulletins were
published by the Russian Academy of Sciences in St.
Petersburg and edited by Wild, the Commission’s chair
(Wild, 1882). Extensive guidelines on the publication
of data and reports were drawn up at IPC-4 in Vienna
in 1884, but no uniform template was established and
no centralized IPY-1 publication series was envisioned.
Instead, each nation published its observations
independently to a vaguely standardized pattern of
the ‘expedition volume.’ These volumes were printed
in several languages, primarily English, French and
German, but also in Dutch and Russian, often with a
parallel text. Altogether, 22 IPY-1 expedition volumes
appeared between 1885 and 1910 (Cronenwett, 2010;
Fig. 1.1-5). 10
P l a n n I n g a n d I m P l e m e n t I n g I P Y 2 0 0 7–2 0 0 8 7