International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

meteorological observations, weather forecasting,
climate modeling, oceanographic studies and others. 7
The path for merging the ICSU and WMO planning
processes was thus wide open.
IHY Team Branches Off
The PG report to ICSU in February 2004 referred
to its continuous interactions with the International
Heliophysical Year (IHY) as well as two other similar
initiatives, the eGY and the International Year of Planet
Earth, IYPE, under UNESCO. Nevertheless, with each
passing month, the planning for IPY and IHY became
more detached. Both initiatives continued to claim
their origins to the same line of succession from IPY-1
to IPY-2 to IGY and they often used the same photos
of Carl Weyprecht and IGY rockets in their respective
documents (Fig. 1.3-2), but with less and less
knowledge of each other’s work, they were looking
increasingly like distant kin. Their last joint action
had been planning for the AGU/EGU session in April
2003. Since July 2003 onward, no member of the IHY
planning group attended any important IPY meeting;
similarly, the first issue of the IHY Newsletter (July 2003)
contained no reference to IPY.
The separation became official in April 2004 as
the IHY team gathered for its first planning meeting
in April 2004 at the National Solar Observatory in
Sac Peak, New Mexico, U.S.A. The meeting press
release (Scientists to plan International Heliophysical
Year) as well as several preparatory and subsequent
documents (i.e. Davila, 2004; Davila et al., 2004) lacked
any reference to the activities related to IPY 2007–2008.
In 2005, IHY became a recognized initiative under
the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna with
its own logo, Organizing Committee and Secretariat,
a Newsletter and website (www.ihy2007.org/), and,
finally, its own publications. 8 Eventually, all four
initiatives—IHY, IPY, eGY and the International Year of
Planet Earth—became fully independent programs
that charted their separate courses. 9
Fig. 1.3-2.‘Shared
genealogies,’
separate tracks.
Presentation on the
plans for International
Heliophysical Year
2007 by Joseph Davila
(March 2, 2004), with
no references to the
planning for IPY 2007
–2008.
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 55