IAPSO Newsletter No. 2.1 - December 2017

IAPSO Newsletter No. 2.1 - December 2017
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The IAPSO six-monthly Newsletter

Vol. 2 n. 1 (December 2017)

This informal newsletter, released approximately every six months aims to keep IAPSO Members informed about the activities of the Association. IAPSO welcomes contribution from Delegates about recent research findings in their respective countries or details of research programmes that are upcoming or have been completed.

Past issues are stored in the IAPSO website (IAPSO Letters Archive). Please forward this message to those who will benefit from the information. Your comments and contributions are welcome (please write to iapso.sg@gmail.com).

 

In this issue

1. News from IAPSO

   1.1 Prince Albert 1 Medal 2017: Medalist  

   1.2 Eugene LaFond Medal 2017: Medalist

   1.3 IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA Joint Assembly, Cape Town, 2017

   1.4 IAPSO Scientific Assembly in 2021

2. News from IUGG

3. News from SCOR

4. Centenary: Prof. Walter Munk

5. Obituary: Dr. Christopher Michael Duncombe-Rae

6. Contacting IAPSO: New Secretary-General's address

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1. News from IAPSO

1.1 Prince Albert 1 Medal 2017: Medalist

Albert I medal pictureThe Prince Albert I Medal is an award offered by the Foundation Rainier III of Monaco to a scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the enhancement and advancement of the physical and/or chemical sciences of the oceans. It is awarded every two years to a most prominent scientist chosen by a specially appointed IAPSO Award Committee. One year prior to each IAPSO Assembly, the Secretary General of IAPSO will call for nominations for the award. Nominations must be sent to the Secretary General within three months after the announcement.


Lynne Talley, Distinguished Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA, is the Prince Albert I Medal recipient 2017 for her outstanding contribution to our knowledge of the global ocean's water masses, circulation, dynamics and role in climate.


The Award ceremony, led by Dr. Denise Smythe-Wright, President of IAPSO, took place on August 31, 2017, at the IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA Joint Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa, during which Prof. Talley delivered the Albert I Memorial Lecture "A case for sustained observations of the ocean: observing the overturning circulation and its variability".

 

1.2 Eugene LaFond Medal 2017: Medalist

 

Eugene LaFondMedal picture

The Eugene LaFond Medal is awarded to an ocean scientist from a developing country making a presentation (poster or oral) in a IAPSO-sponsored or co-sponsored symposium at the IUGG or IAPSO assemblies.


The Eugene LaFond Medal 2017 has been awarded to Dr. Jonathan Durgadoo from Mauritius for his oral presentation "Indian Ocean sources of Agulhas leakage". This was delivered on August 29, 2017 within the IAPSO-IAMAS joint symposium "The Second International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE-2) and related oceanic and coupled atmospheric research in the Indian Ocean" during the IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA 2017 Joint Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa.


The LaFond Medal will next be awarded at the IUGG 2019 in Montreal, Canada.

 

Medalists Cape Town 2017 photo Sara Durante

 

Prof. Talley and Dr. Durgadoo showing their awards at the Medal Award Ceremony, Cape Town August 31, 2017 (Photo courtesy – Sara Durante, Italy)

For further information about the medals, nomination procedures and previous medal winners, see http://iapso.iugg.org/medals-and-awards.

 

1.3 IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA Joint Assembly, Cape Town: Report Back

The IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA Joint Assembly officially closed on Friday 1 September 2017. The conference was a highly successful Joint Assembly at Cape Town's International Conference Centre, organized through Scatterlings Conference Company; this was the first of its kind between these three IUGG associations. Lasting a full 5 days, the Joint Assembly had 1038 registrants in total, although 57 did not attend. Accompanying persons totalled 29, with registrations from 64 countries and delegates from 54 countries on site.

NUMBERS

IAPSO

IAMAS

IAGA

REGISTRATIONS

230

339

383

ABSTRACTS - ORAL

215

375

489

ABSTRACTS - POSTER

98

115

68

The Scientific Program, including the abstracts, and a Post Conference report, are available on the IAPSO website (http://iapso.iugg.org/scientific-assemblies23/79-2017-iapso-iamas-iaga-joint-assembly.html).

 CapeTown2017 Opening ceremony photo John Turner

IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA Joint Assembly opening ceremony (Photo courtesy – Prof. John Turner, IAMAS President)

1.4 IAPSO Scientific Assembly in 2021

After a discussion during a meeting on August 31, 2017, the IAPSO EC voted for Busan, Republic of Korea to host the next Joint Assembly with IAMAS and IACS. These associations had also reached the same decision so the next venue will be in Busan. More details will become available in 2019. 

2. News from IUGG                         

In 2019 IUGG will celebrate its centenary. It will mark the occasion in a number of ways, many of them alongside the 26th General Assembly to be held in Montreal 8-19 July 2019. An ad hoc committee, which met in Montreal in September prior to the IUGG Executive Committee meeting, has been set up to co-ordinate events. At the forefront will be the publication of a book on the History of IUGG and its Associations. This will be available at the end of 2018, probably in electronic form. IUGG will also host a Centenary Day at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on the 29 July. Everything is still in the planning stage, but IUGG is encouraging all Associations to mark the centenary in their own way and for National Delegates to promote the Centenary in their own countries and mark it in some way. The IUGG centenary is also the centenary of IAPSO and the Executive Committee has been discussing how to celebrate it. If you have any suggestions please let the SG know.

Details of all Centenary events will be given in this Newsletter and on the IAPSO website over the next year as plans progress.

3. News from SCOR

Because IAPSO is affiliated to SCOR, the IAPSO President is a member of the SCOR Executive Committee. Denise Smythe-Wright, therefore, attended their meeting in Cape Town 3-6 September. While much of the business centered around reports from current SCOR working groups and affiliated organizations, substantial time was devoted to the evaluation of five working group proposals submitted for the 2017 round of funding. After robust discussion it was decided to fund three proposals. These are as follows

FLOTSAM - a plan to address the problem of floating litter in the open ocean at the global scale by disentangling coastal processes, with their short timescales, from the open ocean low frequency processes.

EBUS – this will focus on the integration of existing knowledge of eastern boundary upwelling systems to formulate recommendations for setting up regional observational systems and climate modeling approaches to monitor and understand physical and biogeochemical ocean-atmosphere interactions.

P-OBS – a proposal to identify methods and technologies that can be incorporated into large-scale sampling programmes.

Besides the formal business the Executive Committee and guests had an enjoyable afternoon hearing a series of presentations about current marine science in South Africa.

 

4. Centenary: Prof. Walter Munk

Walter Munk IUGG 2015 PragueProf. Walter Munk, scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, is arguably the most distinguished living oceanographer, and one of the founding fathers of modern Physical Oceanography.


His innumerable contributions to our field are milestones in the evolution of Physical Oceanography during the last fifty years. Prof. Munk is a member of all the major scientific societies, including the US National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London.


He has received numerous national and international medals and awards, amongst which IAPSO's first Albert I Medal in 2001.


Born in Austria on October 19, 1917, Prof. Munk celebrated his 100th birthday this year.


For the final event in celebration of Walter Munk's centennial, UC San Diego welcomed His Serene Highness (H.S.H.) Prince Albert II of Monaco for a Centennial Conversation with Walter on Thursday, 26 October,, 2017 which was held at the Robert Paine Scripps Forum for Science, Society and the Environment at Scripps Oceanography. The event can be seen at https://scripps.ucsd.edu/symposiums/munk100/.

 

5. Obituary: Dr. Christopher Michael Duncombe-Rae

Chris Duncombe-Rae

 

IAPSO deeply regrets to announce that Dr. Christopher Michael Duncombe-Rae passed away unexpectedly on October 11, 2017, while on a flight from South Africa to the USA.

Dr. Duncombe-Rae was a Specialist Scientists in physical oceanography and data management in the Oceans and Coast branch of the Department of Environmental Affairs, in Cape Town.

He conducted research in the ocean and shelf environment of Marion island a Subantarctic island south of Africa, Benguela and Agulhas ecosystems, and participated in many research cruises in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans. Near the end of his career, he turned his attention to data stewardship and marine information systems, leading South Africa in the development of its Marine Information Management System (MIMS).

He was coordinating the South Africa's IIOE-2 planning committee and was also one of the co-convenor of the international symposium on "Second International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE-2) and related Oceanic and Coupled Atmospheric Research in the Indian Ocean which was organized along with the IAPSO-IAMAS-IAGA Joint Assembly in Cape Town from 27 August to 1 September, 2017.

Dr Duncombe-Rae is survived by his wife, Dr Deidre Byrne, who is also an ocean scientist and an 11 year-old son Jacob.

 

6. Contacting IAPSO: New Secretary-General's address

The Secretary-General is the main point of contact for all matters concerning IAPSO. Her office moved to a new address in January 2017:

Dr. Stefania Sparnocchia
CNR - Istituto di Scienze Marine
Area Science Park - Basovizza - Edificio Q2
Strada Statale 14 - Km. 163.5
I-34149 Trieste, Italy

E-mail: iapso.sg@gmail.com

 

End of IAPSO Newsletter Volume 2 Number 1 (1 December 2017)

Edited by S. Sparnocchia, D. Smythe-Wright and I. Ansorge

 


 


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