2024 IAPSO Activities

INTRODUCTION

IAPSO has the prime goal of ‘promoting the study of scientific problems relating to the oceans and the interactions taking place at the sea floor, coastal, and atmospheric boundaries insofar as such research is conducted by the use of mathematics, physics, and chemistry.’ IAPSO works mainly through 1) biennial scientific assemblies; 2) working groups; 3) commissions; 4) services and 5) website information. Of special importance to IAPSO is the involvement of scientists, especially early career scientists and students from developing and notably from least developed countries in oceanographic activities.

IAPSO maintains formal liaison with other scientific commissions and committees. These include the ISC's Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), and UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)

For more information see https://iapso-ocean.org.

ADMINISTRATION

The IAPSO Bureau was renewed in July 2023 during the IUGG General Assembly in Berlin. It comprises:

President: Hans van Haren (the Netherlands)
Past President: Trevor McDougall (Australia)
Secretary General: Silvia Blanc (Argentina)
Treasurer: Ken Ridgway (Australia) 

The Executive Committee comprises the Bureau members and

Vice-President: Agatha de Boer (Sweden), Toshiyuki Hibiya (Japan)
Members at Large: Juliet Hermes (South Africa), Joellen Russell (USA), Yukio Masumoto (Japan), Jae-Hun Park (Republic of Korea), Alejandra Sanchez-Franks (United Kingdom), Regina Rodrigues (Brazil), Peter Zavialov (Russia), Malin Ödalen (Germany, chair IAPSO-EC)

The IAPSO office and day-to-day business is managed by Secretary General (SG) Silvia Blanc. The SG is responsible for the IAPSO website.

IAPSO finances are managed by the Australian-based Treasurer, Ken Ridgway.

Except during the Berlin meeting, IAPSO business meetings were conducted by email and videoconference where appropriate.

ACTIVITIES

IAMAS/IACS/IAPSO Joint Assembly, 20-25 July 2025, Busan, Republic of Korea
During the whole year IAPSO Secretary General (SG) has been working closely with IAMAS and IACS SGs as well as with the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) SG on a great variety of topics such as the Scientific Program of the Joint Assembly (JA), including selection of invited talks, conveners for the exclusive and joint symposia, logistics of the event, accommodation facilities, travel grants, important deadlines, general organization, event website (https://www.baco-25.org/).

The sessions in the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO) focus on a wide array of topics related to the physical sciences of the oceans. Key areas of focus include the mean sea level and tides, air-sea interaction, ocean mixing, ocean salinity, tsunamis and other ocean hazards, ocean modelling development, marine meteorology, and marine geodesy and geophysics. 

Calls for the Nomination of the Prince Albert I Medal and the Early Career Scientist Medal and their respective candidates evaluation and selection procedures were carried out so that the corresponding awards can be given to the winner candidates in Busan during the JA.

SCOR Administration 
Being member of the SCOR-EC, IAPSO President Hans van Haren attended virtually via zoom the full SCOR Annual Meeting held in Qingdao China in October 2024. The many subsidiary bodies of SCOR were all presented, reviewed and memberships renewed. Many of these bodies coordinate physical, biogeochemical and fisheries research in the global ocean. Two new SCOR working groups were selected for funding, each receiving sufficient funds for three face-to-face meetings. WG171 ‘MASIS’, Towards best practices for Measuring and Archiving Stable Isotopes in Seawater, was elected together with WG172 ‘SALTWATER’, Oceanic Salt Intrusion into Tidal Freshwater Rivers. Several replacements of EC-members were made, including Paul Myers now being SCOR’s president and IAPSO’s Yukio Masumoto now being one of SCOR’s vice-presidents.

ACTIVITIES OF ASSOCIATION COMMISSIONS, WORKING GROUPS

Early Career Scientist Working Group
In 2024, IAPSO ECS have been reinforcing their team to prepare for 2025. Several new members have joined the working group, to allow for new activities in preparation for BACO-25. IAPSO ECS have contributed to an ongoing ECS initiative from IUGG, led by Dr. Katia Pinheiro, and have joined the newly-formed IUGG ECS committee led by the IUGG Secretary General Alexander Rudloff. IAPSO ECS have followed the scientific community and transitioned from X (former Twitter) to Bluesky as the main social media communication channel, and are already reaching 400 subscribers there (@iapso-ecs.bsky.social). The social media team has drafted an interactive Bluesky platform for oceanography job postings, which will be launched in 2025. Meanwhile, the newsletter team has conducted interviews with Early Career oceanographers, which will be featured in the newsletters of 2025 (first issue: https://www.iapsoecs.org/uploads/newsletter/iapsoecs_newsletter_2025_01.pdf)

IAPSO Best Practice Study Groups
As a result of the third call launched by IAPSO for Best Practice Study Groups at the rate of every two years (https://iapso-ocean.org/funding-opportunities/best-practices-study-groups.html) for the period 2024-2026, the following three proposals were selected:

• BPSG on calibrating measurements of total dissolved inorganic carbon in seawater.
• BPSG on ship based CTD/O2 operation, calibration and processing procedures.
• BPSG on reconciling cross-platform observations of ice-shelf melt.

An IAPSO Best Practice Study Group addresses an issue whose resolution will assist in the conduct of oceanographic research. In carrying out oceanographic research, a choice must frequently be made between a few options for measuring data, analysing data, processing software, or modelling a system. The reasons for choosing between competing methods are often not well documented and the relative strengths and weaknesses of these routes are usually not published or well known. Each Best Practice Study Group receives up to US$12,000 towards the costs of a meeting and presents reports with partial advances every six months. 

Joint Commission on Ice-Ocean Interactions (JCIOI, joint with IACS)
JCIOI held an online workshop on ice-ocean interactions from 14-18th October 2024, drawing together researchers interested in the processes that govern ocean-driven melt of glaciers and ice sheets. The workshop addressed four key science themes:

1. New perspectives on melt parameterisations
2. Focusing on the grounding zone
3. Emerging techniques for observing ice-ocean interactions
4. Impacts of meltwater on ocean circulation

Recordings of invited presentations from the workshop are available on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@jointcommissiononice-ocean2388.

An IAPSO-funded Best Practice Study Group in Copenhagen, in September 2024, was hosted to develop a framework for observing and modelling ocean-driven ice melt rates in Antarctica. Outcomes from the meeting will inform best practice on the collection of oceanographic, geophysical and glaciological data, and their synthesis in ice sheet and ocean models. 

A Practice Bridge article on the need for a broader framework for understanding ice-ocean interactions in Antarctica was also recently published (FUSION; https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2024.00036). The article forms part of a SOOS Symposium Special Feature Understanding the Trajectory and Implication of a Changing Southern Ocean: The Need for an Integrated Observing System.

Finally, JCIOI will be hosting a session with SOFIA at BACO-25: JCP05 Ice sheet-ocean interactions and impacts.

Joint Committee on the Properties of Seawater (JCS)
Members continued working on tasks identified during the 2018 Workshops and on maintaining the TEOS-10 website (www.teos-10.org) and associated software, as well as other items relevant to JCS.  The new chemical speciation taskgroup is very active, pursuing tasks related to the development of a comprehensive speciation models for Tris buffers, trace metals, and certain weak acids in seawater, to allow for applications in pH measurement/standardization, anoxic waters, and reactions in/near hydrothermal vents. They are also developing material for teaching the basics of chemical speciation to 3rd year undergraduates and at the graduate level, and working towards a 2025 open workshop to address the fact that skills in the fundamentals of physical chemistry and aqueous solution thermodynamics have been in decline for some years, which is hampering progress in chemical oceanography. The pH subgroup has also made progress towards providing traceable measurements over a wide range of salinity and temperature in seawater, as well as in providing an uncertainty model and standardizing methods for pH measurements. However, problems with the long-term development and maintenance of JCS and related websites are becoming increasingly urgent to solve. A long-delayed in-person meeting of JCS is planned at the Busan IAMAS-IACS-IAPSO Joint Assembly in July 2025  at which point Terms of Reference and other discussions about the future of JCS will occur.

Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL)
In 2024 the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) added 1796 station-years from 730 stations. The previous three years had seen fewer than 700 stations added each year, but 2024 saw a return to pre-pandemic levels. One reason may be because sites that became inoperable had been repaired.

The PSMSL as part of the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC) was successful in securing funding from the UKRI – Natural Environment Research Council, under the Atlantic Climate and Environment Strategic Science (AtlantiS) programme to support some of our core activities from 2024 to 2029.

In July 2024 one of the metals conservators from National Museums Liverpool visited NOC Liverpool to carry out routine maintenance on the Bidston Doodson–Légé Tide Prediction Machine. We took the opportunity when the conservator was visiting, to train up four more "computers" (programmers) and to film parts of the process, to try to preserve and pass on this important part of our history.

Tsunami Commission (Joint with IASPEI and IAVCEI)
The JTC jointly organized The 2nd UNESCO-IOC Global Tsunami Symposium on "Two Decades After 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: Reflection and the Way Forward" held in Banda Ache, Indonesia during 11-14 November 2024. The JTC also organized The Special International Scientific Workshop on "Tsunami Sciences after the 2004 Sumatra Earthquake" as a pre-event of the UNESCO-IOC Symposium. Members of the JTC actively participated in organization of numerous tsunami sessions in AGU, EGU, AOGS General Assemblies and other Int. conferences, such as The 3rd World Conference on Meteotsunamis. The JTC published current tsunami research in Pure and Applied Geophysics as topical volumes, such as the five papers published online in the Tonga Volcanic Explosion 2022 Topical collection.

Supported Meetings

IAPSO requests to support the following scientific meetings have been accepted in the frame of the IUGG – Symposia Support 2025 Programme:

• ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) Winter School 2025, Honolulu HI, USA, 15-23 March 2025 (USD 10,000) 
• 10th Oceanography Colloquium - 12th National Marine Sciences Conference, Puerto Madryn, Argentina, December 2025 (USD 9,000) 

Two applications to IUGG Grants Program 2024-2025, supported by IAPSO, were awarded with USD 17,500.each, namely:

• The infra-gravity wave initiative.
• ECSNet: the IUGG Early-Career Scientists Network.

Awards/Anniversaries/Obituaries

Awards

• Prof. Em. John Church (UNSW, Australia) who was awarded by IAPSO with the Prince Albert I Medal in 2023, received the Fellowship of the International Science Council (ISC) in 2024.
• Prof. Yukio Masumoto, one of the IAPSO Executive Committee members, became one of the Vice-Presidents of SCOR..

Obituaries

Prof. William Dewar (USA) passed away on December 28 2024. Dr Dewar was Prof. em. of Florida State University, Regarding his academic education, he got his Ph. D. in Physical Oceanography. Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1983; his M.S. in Physical Oceanography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1980; and his B.S. in Physics, Minor in Mathematics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., 1977. His research interests were directed toward understanding the dynamics of the ocean at scales from 100 km to 10,000 km, because of a long-term research goal of understanding global climate with an approach both analytical and numerical. His published work has impacted modelers and theoreticians alike. He represented IAPSO at the Commission on Mathematical Geophysics, a Union Commission of IUGG. He was a very kind and wise person and an outstanding mathematical oceanographer. Unfortunately, Dr Dewar went too soon; he was too young, too energetic. The international oceanographic community benefited from his wide-ranging insights, his pleasant personality and his unique sense of humour.   He is already being missed by oceanographers all over the world.

Dr. Jorge Carlos Novarini (Argentina/USA) passed away on December 4 2024. Throughout his 45 years of scientific activity, carried out in Argentina and the United States of America, he got may achievements. In particular, he introduced Acoustical Oceanography/Ocean Acoustics in Argentina, both in the academic field (Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences – University of Buenos Aires) and in the naval field (Head of the Underwater Acoustics Division of the Naval Hydrography Service, 1969-1980; and of the Naval Research and Development Service, 1980-1992). He taught at the Physics Department of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, becoming Academic Secretary. He was Professor/Researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, USA); Head of the High Frequency Loss Branch of the US Naval Oceanographic Office and Senior Research Scientist at Planning Systems Inc. He published numerous articles in specialized scientific journals. He has received international distinctions such as being named a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. He had an active participation in the National Committee of IAPSO in Argentina in the period beginning of the 70s till the beginning of the 90s. Those of us who had the pleasure of sharing his professional activity in the framework of scientific research and who have received the generous transfer of knowledge in an area as specific as underwater acoustics, a valuable tool to oceanographers, and who have witnessed his permanent intellectual honesty and human integrity, will always be very grateful to him.

PLANNED FUTURE ACTIVITIES/ ANNOUNCEMENTS
The following activities are scheduled for 2025 and beyond

• Participation in the 2025 SCOR Annual Meeting in Santa Marta, Colombia from 29 to 31 October 2025.
• Organization of the next Joint Assembly with IAMAS and IACS in Busan, Republic of Korea, 20-25 July 2025.
• 29th IUGG General Assembly, July 2027, Incheon, Republic of Korea.