2007 IAPSO Activities
The principal activity during the year was the participation in the General IUGG Assembly in Perugia, Italy, July 2-17. There were over 4000 participants from the different associations represented in IUGG at the Assembly in Perugia. Almost 300 were registered as IAPSO participants. Some 40 of these (mainly from developing countries) got travel grants.
During the Assembly there were 12 IAPSO symposia to which 343 abstracts were submitted. IAPSO lead 3 joint symposia, which attracted 141 abstracts. IAPSO also cosponsored 21 symposia to which 776 abstracts were submitted.
An IAPSO highlight during the assembly was the Prince Albert I lecture "From Swallow floats to autonomous observing networks" given by Prof. Russ Davis, Scripps Insitution of Oceanography, who was awarded the Prince Albert I Medal in connection with the lecture.
IAPSO also awards a second medal, the Eugene Lafond Medal, to a developing world scientist who presents a notable paper at an IAPSO symposium. Following a review of the nominations for this award after the Perugia meeting, the IAPSO EC decided to present this medal to Dr. Catia Motta Domingues from Brazil, for her talk entitled "Towards more accurate estimates of the thermosteric sea level rise" in the IAG/IAPSO symposium "Global sea-level change: Altimetry, GNSS and tide gauge measurements".
A new IAPSO Executive Committee was elected by the national IAPSO delegates at the General Business Meeting (GMB) in Perugia. They also decided to sanction some changes of the IAPSO Statues and By-Laws.
At the GBM also a detailed report on the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) was presented by Philip Woodworth (on behalf of himself and Lesley Rickards). This report is available on the Proudman Laboratory website. During the past year the PSMSL made important contributions to the Fourth Assessment Report (4AR) of IPCC 2007, and also to the WCRP workshop on Understanding Sea-Level Rise and Variability, held at UNESCO in Paris in June 2007.
A brief report was given by Trevor McDougall (from Hobart, Australia) on IAPSO/SCOR WG 121 on Ocean Mixing, which has been chaired by Robin Muench (USA). Trevor McDougall also made a presentation on the work of SCOR/IAPSO WG 127 on the Thermodynamics and Equation of State of Seawater.
The first meeting of SCOR/IAPSO WG 129 (DOES -- Deep Ocean Exchanges with the Shelf), co-chaired by John Johnson (UK) and Piers Chapman (USA), was held at the IUGG Assembly in Perugia.
The (Canadian) National Organizing Committee (NOC) for the 2009 Joint Assembly in Montreal came to Perugia and met on July 9 with Executive Members of the three associations (IAMAS, IAPSO, IACS) to discuss important issues that need to be resolved for a successful meeting (e.g., scientific program, accommodation, abstract submission, registration, venue for the conference, etc.).
The IAPSO President and Secretary General, participated in the Annual SCOR meeting in Bergen, Norway, 26-28 August 2007. The state of the working groups was discussed. Some of them are arranged together with IAPSO. New WG:s were discussed, for more information see the SCOR website http://www.scor-int.org.
November 22-24 the IAPSO President and SG met with the National Organizing Committee (NOC) for the 2009 Joint Assembly in Montreal together with the SG of IAMAS and the President of IACS. The localities were inspected and found to be well suited for the meeting. Also, the symposia were outlined together with a time schedule for the planning process before the Assembly.
Finally a pamphlet presenting IAPSO was produced in December 2007. This was introduced and spread at the AGU meeting in San Francisco in December and will be sent to the National Correspondents.
The IAPSO website has now been moved to the new Secretary General Johan Rodhe in Sweden (http://iapso.sweweb.net).