International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

The IPY-1 expeditions were also featured in
numerous scientific papers and journal articles
published across the participating nations, but no
overall IPY-1 bibliography was produced. The IPC had
directed that 12 to 16 copies of all IPY publications
and copies of the related observation records and
manuscripts should be archived in a designated IPY
depository at the Central Physical Observatory in
St. Petersburg, Russia (Baker, 1982b; Sukhova and
Tammiksaar, 2008). Unfortunately, that depository
was cut off from most of the outside world during
World War I and after the Russian revolution of 1917.
As a result, the IPY-1 archive stayed closed to the
international science community until the 1990s. The
IPY expeditions were also reported in newspapers,
lectures, popular books and other media aimed at
general public; but there is no record that the IPC ever
considered what we call today an ‘outreach strategy.’
The heart of IPY-1 envisioned by Weyprecht was
the coordinated program of year-long observations,
on the basis of which fundamental issues in polar
and global meteorology and geophysics could be
addressed. The British Meteorological Office and the
Deutsche Seewarte (German Maritime Observatory)
used IPY-1 data for the production of daily synoptic
charts (Baker, 1982a; Corby, 1982) and at least one
German dissertation by Sebald Berhard Ehrhart was
based upon IPY meteorological records (Lüdecke,
2004; 2009 – Fig. 1.1-4). Sidney Chapman, the leading
figure in IGY 1957–1958 acknowledged that IPY-1 “…
made excellent contributions to the descriptive and
statistical study of the aurora and to its connection
with magnetic disturbance” (Chapman, 1959a); in
another publication he made several references to
their use (Chapman, 1959b). K.R. Birkeland, member
of the Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition in 1902-
1903, referred to his regular use of the observations
made by 15 IPY-1 stations. But in general the data
so painstakingly acquired by 14 expeditions and
associated teams from 10 nations 11 (Baker, 1982b; Barr,
1985/2008; Heathcote and Armitage, 1959) were not
fully utilized. Indeed, many of the IPY-1 data were not
analyzed until the 1920s or even until recently (Baker,
1982a; Lüdecke, 2004; Wood and Overland, 2006;
www.arctic.noaa.gov/aro/ipy-1).
The IPC dissolved itself in 1891, without producing
a summary assessment of the IPY-1 program and its
achievements. One such assessment was given some
40 years later by Henryk Arctowski 12 who observed:
“It may be that if the publication, and above all the
discussion of the observations had been left to a
central office, possibly international, the scientific level
of the work accomplished would have been better
appreciated” (Arctowski, 1931). Due to the lack of
such post-IPY-1 common body, financial constraints,
or because powerful national institutions were not
yet ready for long-term coordination, much of the
potential scientific benefit from the synchronized
observation program was missed. What remained was
a collection of impressive but merely concomitant
Fig. 1.1-2 (left)
IPY-1 observation
stations in the Arctic,
1881–1884.
(from Neumayer 1901,
courtesy Cornelia Lüdecke)
Fig. 1.1-3 (right) IPY-1
observation stations
in the Southern
Hemisphere,
1882–1884.
(from Neumayer 1901,
courtesy Cornelia Lüdecke)
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