IAMAS President’s Report
IAMAS2005 Scientific Assembly
Beijing, China
2-11 August 2005
IAMAS2005: It is a great pleasure to welcome all participants to the IAMAS2005 Scientific
Assembly here in Beijing. Many people have worked very hard to ensure the success of this
meeting, and, on behalf of the international IAMAS community, I would like to express gratitude
and appreciation. The very interesting scientific program is due especially to the special efforts
of the IAMAS Secretary General, who, assisted by the Deputy SG and the rest of the Bureau, has
worked with the several dozen scientists who have agreed to serve as conveners to ensure its
variety and strength. The Local Organizing Committee, led by IAMAS vice-president Dr.
Guoxiong Wu and supported exceedingly well by the IAMAS2005 Conference Secretariat and
its staff, especially Dr. Jianping Li, Ms. (Jenny) Zheng Lin, and all of the wonderful junior
scientist assistants, has done a wonderful job on ensuring our very nice venue and productive
interactions across the many institutions and organizations that have joined in as co-sponsors of
the meeting. The conveners of the 45 symposia have done a marvelous job, arranging for invited
speakers and organizing the program around the nearly 1500 abstracts that were submitted and
we are expecting this to be the best attended of all of the IAMAS special assemblies. Our thanks
and appreciation to everyone.
Commission Activities: I would like to compliment the IAMAS commissions on their very
active efforts. Four of the commissions held their own meetings in 2004 and 2005, providing
important opportunities for advancing international scientific understanding and cooperation.
The commission-organized meetings included: the Quadrennial Ozone Symposium (1-8 June
2004 in Kos, Greece), the14th International Conference on Clouds and Precipitation (18-23 July
2004 in Bologna, Italy), the Quadrennial Radiation Commission Meeting (23-28 August 2004 in
Busan, Korea), and ICMA’s series of workshops and cosponsorship of several symposia at the
tenth IAGA Scientific Assembly (18-29 July, 2005 in Toulouse, France).
IAMAS Newsletter: I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Deputy SG John Turner,
who has involved Gareth Marshall in creating and publishing the first two issues of what are to
be semiannual newsletters. IAMAS has become the largest of the IUGG associations and a great
deal is going on across the commissions to promote advances in understanding and international
cooperation in research. We are hopeful that this newsletter will help to build awareness of our
far-flung activities among the scientific community and with IUGG member nations.
Presidential Activities: In addition to assisting with the planning and organization of IAMAS
2005, my primary activities on behalf of IAMAS have been liaison and interaction with other
scientific organizations on behalf of IAMAS. In particular, these have included:
IUGG: The IAMAS president is a member of the IUGG Executive Committee. The
IUGG EC met in Boulder in August of 2004 and will meet in Perugia in September of
2005. Activities included: discussion and approval of the application for the formation of
the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (which will be the 8th association
member of IUGG), participation in a subcommittee working to improve the formulation
of the IUGG mission and goal, discussion of how best to enhance outreach efforts to the
scientific community in Africa, and early planning for the Perugia General Assembly in
July of 2007.
SCOR: The IAMAS president serves along with the president of IAPSO as IUGG
representatives to SCOR (the Scientific Committee for Oceanic Research), which last met
in Venice, Italy in September of 2004. Although only ex officio members of the SCOR
EC, we are expected by SCOR to serve as liaisons to various of the oceanic activities
around the world that SCOR oversees and to organizations with which it has affiliations.
For the 2004-2005 period, among other activities, I completed my service as a member of
the planning committee for the ICSU workshop on the significance to society of potential
impacts by comets and asteroids (a book of papers is in preparation) and served as liaison
to the Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) of the World Climate Research Programme
(WCRP).
WCRP/JSC: On behalf of both SCOR and IAMAS, I participated in the WCRP/JSC
meeting in Guayaquil, Ecuador in March of 2005. The main focus of the discussions was
on the proposed new JSC integrated strategy (COPES) intended to link together the many
threads of the WCRP—considerable progress seemed to be made in making clearer to the
research scientists how this would complement rather than displace existing WCRP
programmes and activities. In addition to personally catching up on the wide range of
activities sponsored by the WCRP (many of which will be reported on at IAMAS2005,
and so are not reviewed here), I was able to work to try to enhance the linkages between
the JSC and IAMAS, for example, by better coordination of meetings.
ICSU Workshop on Comet and Asteroid Impacts and Society: The workshop, held in
November of 2004 in the Canary Islands, was not a rehash of the Cretaceous extinction
impact, but a meeting focused on what the potential for impacts means to society today.
The attendees covered a wide range of disciplines, including astrophysics, atmospheric
physics and chemistry, ecosystem science, anthropology, geology, social science,
economics, and disaster planning. Among the interesting findings were that there remains
some difference between the estimates of the number of impacts that astrophysical
surveys and evidence would suggest and the higher number that limited geological and
anthropological evidence suggests, about the potential atmospheric and oceanic impacts
(with a new paper presented suggesting that a 0.5 km diameter object could cause a
global ozone catastrophe), about the types and sizes of expected oceanic tsunami, about
the impacts on ecosystems, about the physical and economic impacts on society, and
about preparedness and communication needs.
IPCC: With the IPCC starting preparation of their fourth assessment report, two
activities were undertaken. To enhance awareness in the atmospheric sciences
community about the IPCC effort and the results of their preparatory activities, a special
evening program of reports from various of the IPCC activities was arranged for the
IAMAS2005 assembly. In addition, after some discussion, IAMAS was invited to
nominate technical reviewers for chapters being prepared by WG I. The commissions
were invited to submit nominations and these were assembled and forwarded to IPCC
WG I; it is hoped that this will assist IPCC in its important work while ensuring that the
international scientific community has a full opportunity to offer technical comments and
review.
National Committees: I met with the US National Committee for the IUGG to discuss
its urging that all elections of officers of international associations be contested. Among
the aspects considered were the impact such an approach could have on ensuring
geographical and disciplinary coverage, on ensuring the ongoing involvement of all who
are willing to serve, and the fact that the IAMAS by-laws (and those of most of the other
associations) do allow this, but do not require it, with the main consideration being the
issue of how many nominations are made by the various members, the need for the
nominating nation to ensure some financial resources for their candidate (if elected), etc.
In conclusion, it was agreed that ensuring that there is really an opportunity for a wide
range of participation and a need to avoid the set of officers being too narrowly
representative was most important.
Other activities of the president included sending notes on the occurrence of the death or
retirement of prominent members of our field. Among those who passed away in the past year
were: Dr. Vladimir Ivanovici of Romania (an at-large member of the IAMAS EC), Prof. Hans
Ertel of Germany, Prof. James Holton of the University of Washington, Prof Peter Hobbs of the
University of Washington, Dr. C. David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and
Dr. Gerard Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. [Since this report, Dr. Joseph
Smagorinsky, former director of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, has also
passed away.]