Annual Report 2000

Administration

Following the informal IUGG Executive Committee meeting held in Boulder and attended by the President and the Secretary-General, the IAGA Executive Committee met in Edinburgh, Scotland on September 8-9, 2000. The committee approved the record of the previous meeting held in Birmingham and agreed planning budgets for 2001 and 2002. Applications for support for local symposia in Brazil, India and the Czech Republic in 2001 were approved. It was agreed that IAGA would lead in co-ordinating a response, together with IASPEI and IAVCEI, to a proposal to establish a committee on electromagnetic studies of earthquakes and volcanoes.

Much of the meeting was taken up with planning for the joint IAGA-IASPEI Scientific Assembly to be held in Hanoi, Vietnam on August 19-31, 2001. This will be the first time IAGA has held an Assembly in Southeast Asia. Local, national, and regional scientists will have the opportunity to participate in a wide range of symposia with topics ranging from the workings of the Earth's internal dynamo to the solar wind. At the Assembly, IAGA will sponsor 58 symposia and co-sponsor 11 symposia with IASPEI, SEDI and ILP. In addition to the symposia, Inter-Association lectures will be given.

To improve communication of IAGA activities a brochure, developed with support from ICSU, was produced and will be published in 2001. The IAGA homepage, hosted by the US National Geophysical Data Center (NOAA), was redesigned to be more efficient and to make it easier to find information on IAGA activities.

Scientific meetings

In 2000 IAGA sponsored the following symposia and workshops, held in various regions of the world, to support and promote the Association's scientific activities:

  • "Space Weather: Progress and Challenges in Research and Applications," March 20-24, 2000, Clearwater, Florida, USA
  • "Fifth International Conference on Substorms," May 2000, St. Petersburg, RUSSIA
  • "IX IAGA Workshop on Geomagnetic Observatory Instrument, Data Acquisition and Processing," (In Honour of the 100th Anniversary of the Observatory), June 12-18, 2000, Hurbanovo, SLOVAKIA
  • "The 7th Biennial Castle Meeting on New Trends in Geomagnetism," June 19-25, 2000, Castle Moravany, SLOVAKIA
  • "Space Storms and Space Weather Hazards," June 19-29, 2000, Heraklion, Crete, GREECE
  • "33rd COSPAR Assembly," July 16-23, 2000, Warsaw, POLAND
  • "Lower Atmosphere Effects on the Ionosphere and Upper Atmosphere," July 25-28, 2000, Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC
  • "15th Electromagnetic (EM) Workshop," August 19-26, 2000, Cabo Frio, BRAZIL
  • "The First S-RAMP Conference," October 2-6, 2000, Sapporo, JAPAN
  • "SPARC Second General Assembly," November 6-10, 2000, Mar del Plata, ARGENTINA

Publications

IAGA Bulletins 32w, Geomagnetic Data for 1993 and IAGA Bulletin 32y, Geomagnetic Data for 1994 were published.

The International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) is a global model of the geomagnetic field and its secular variation produced by a group of geomagnetic field modellers working under the auspices of IAGA. The year 2000 revision of the IGRF was agreed in November 1999 and the model coefficients were published in Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors (vol 120 , pp 39-42), and in Geophysical Journal International (vol 141, pp259-262) in 2000.

IAGA Award

Mr Emil Pisara was given an IAGA Long Service award in recognition of his many years of dedicated service at Hurbanovo Observatory, Slovakia. The IAGA President presented Mr Pisara with his medal at the Opening Ceremony of the IX IAGA Workshop on Geomagnetic Observatory Instrument, Data Acquisition and Processing, held at Hurbanovo Observatory.

Other Activities

IAGA was successful in an application for ICSU support for the INTERMAGNET programme. INTERMAGNET has succeeded in accelerating the modernisation of instrumentation, and practices for data collection and dissemination in the global magnetic observatory network. In 2000 participation in INTERMAGNET grew to 75 observatories from 32 countries.

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