International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

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IPY 20 07–20 08
Thiede for SCAR, Rogne for IASC, Egerton for EPB and
Morison for the U.S. SEARCH program. The Russian
IPY team was represented by Chilingarov, Tsaturov,
Kotlyakov, Frolov, Danilov, Klepikov, Priamikov,
Gruzinov, Sychev and other experts.
The meeting started very cautiously as all
parties were testing the waters by arguing for the
‘possibilities’ and ‘challenges’ of the new IPY. Key
presentations by Rapley and Sarukhanian, and
informal interactions helped bring the participants
closer. A ‘Joint Statement’ was adopted at the end
of the meeting recommending to ICSU, WMO and
other interested organizations to nominate IPY 2007–
2008 as a program of high priority. The concluding
paragraphs of that statement stressed the need for
‘jointly-coordinated’ efforts of WMO and ICSU and
recommended that WMO and ICSU develop a plan for
IPY “based on a wide range of inputs …and in close
cooperation with IASC, SCAR and the EC.” The Meeting
also voiced support to a member-country or a group
of countries addressing the UN General Assembly with
a proposal to approve a UN Resolution on holding IPY
2007–2008. That proposal never materialized.
Upon returning from the St. Petersburg meeting,
the ICSU PG issued a call (on 28 January 2004) for
additional input from the national IPY committees,
ICSU Scientific Unions and broad science community
for research ‘ideas’ to be considered for the IPY science
program. The deadline for new submissions was set to
15 March 2004, two weeks prior to the next Planning
Group meeting.
PG Reports to ICSU and WMO: February 2004
Following on their previous arrangements, ICSU
and WMO continued on the path towards merging
their planning processes for IPY. On 11 February 2004,
Rapley and Bell presented on behalf of the Planning
Group a 25-page ‘progress report’ to the 88th Meeting
of the ICSU Executive Board in Paris (ICSU PG, 2004a).
A day prior (10 February) Rapley gave another IPYfocused
presentation to the representatives of the ICSU
Scientific Unions at the French Academy of Sciences.
Besides providing a detailed summary of its activities
since February 2003, the PG team dwelled extensively
on the emerging ICSU-WMO relationship and stressed
its wish “to avoid the possibility of the development
of (two) separate initiatives”. It also advocated its aim
“to incorporate as far as possible the interests of all
relevant scientific bodies, and those of developing
initiatives, such as the proposed International
Heliophysical Year (IHY).” It vowed to develop an
outline for the IPY science plan by late April 2004, so
that it would be open for community evaluation at
several forthcoming meetings in April–July 2004 (see
below). The PG Report recommended that the ICSU
Executive Board make an official announcement of
the ICSU support to IPY 2007–2008 and recommended
that the Board consider joint sponsorship of IPY with
other interested bodies, primarily the WMO.
The outcomes of the meeting could not have
been more positive to the PG planners as the ICSU
Board supported them on all counts. The team was
commended on its successful efforts and was charged
to present the finished report by 1 October 2004. The
ICSU Board made an announcement “to establish an
International Polar Year 2007–2008, subsequent to
confirmation by the 28th ICSU General Assembly (in
2005) and recommended the establishment of the
IPY secretariat (at least by 1 October 2004)”. By far
the most important decision was to propose to WMO
that “the two organizations should jointly sponsor
IPY 2007–2008 and appoint a Committee to plan and
coordinate IPY activities.” With that, the proposal for
joint sponsorship of IPY was officially on the table. It
was now the WMO’s turn to respond and practical
steps were indeed soon undertaken.
On 9 March 2004, Rapley was invited to WMO
Secretariat in Geneva for yet another discussion on
the joint ICSU-WMO efforts with Jarraud, Sarukhanian
and Elena Manaenkova, Director of the Secretary-
General’s Office and External Relations. He also gave
a presentation on the ICSU Planning Group activities
to the group of Directors of WMO Departments.
The response at WMO was cordial and enthusiastic.
Shortly after, Sarukhanian started working on a set
of IPY-related documents for the forthcoming WMO
Executive Council meeting (scheduled for June
2004), including a resolution endorsing future ‘Joint
Organizing Committee’ for IPY to be established by
ICSU and WMO. In addition, WMO decided to create
a special internal body (called ‘Inter-commission Task
Group on IPY’) to coordinate the IPY activities among
the WMO Technical Commissions for the fields in
which WMO was supposed to take the lead, such as