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THE EGGS 1
Aurora The magnificent northern lightsGeoscience on parade:
What happened when more than 11,000 earth scientists gathered in Nice last year
The Future of Geosciences
THE EGGS 2
EGU News
News
Journal Watch
Aurora - The magnificent northern lights Ioannis Daglis and Syun-Ichi Akasofu on the splendors of aurora
Geoscience on parade:What happened when more than 11,000 earth scientists gathered in Nice last year An account by Oliver Morton
The Future of Geosciences New Report on the future of geosciences from the International
Union of Geodesy and Geophysics(IUGG)
Education
Book Reviews
Web Watch
Events
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THE EGGS | ISSUE 7 | MARCH 2004
Cover photo: Aurora in Manitoba, Canada. © Warren Justice
© European Geosciences Union, 2004
Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated. Where prior permission must be obtained for the reproduction or use of textual and multimedia information (sound, images, software, etc.), such permission shall cancel the abovementioned general permission and indicate clearly any restrictions on use.
EDITORS Managing Editor: Kostas KourtidisDepartment of Environmental Engineering, School of EngineeringDemokritus University of ThraceVas. Sofias 12, GR-67100 Xanthi, Greecetel. +30-25410-79383, fax. +30-25410-79379email: [email protected] Assistant Editor: Magdeline PokarBristol Glaciology Center,School of Geographical Sciences, University of BristolUniversity RoadBristol, BS8 1SS, United Kingdomtel. +44(0)117 928 8186, fax. +44(0)117 928 7878email: [email protected] Hydrological Sciences: Guenther BloeschlInstitut fur Hydraulik, Gewasserkunde und WasserwirtschaftTechnische Universitat Wien Karlsplatz 13/223, A-1040 Wien, Austriatel. +43-1-58801-22315, fax. +43-1-58801-22399email: [email protected] Biogeosciences: Jean-Pierre GattusoLaboratoire d’Oceanographie de Villefranche, UMR 7093 CNRS-UPMC B. P. 28, F-06234 Villefranche-sur-mer Cedex France tel. +33-(0)493763859, fax. +33-(0)493763834email: [email protected]: Susanna Zerbini Department of Physics, Sector of Geophysics University of Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 8 40127 Bologna, Italy tel. +39-051-2095019, fax +39-051-2095058e-mail: [email protected] Geodynamics: Bert L.A. Vermeersen Delft University of Technology DEOS - Fac. Aerospace Engineering Astrodynamics and Satellite Systems Kluyverweg 1, NL-2629 HS Delft The Netherlands tel. +31-15-2788272 fax. +31-15-2785322 8e-mail: [email protected] Atmospheric Sciences: Hans Xiang-Yu Huang Danish Meteorological Institute, Lyngbyvej 100, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmarktel. +45-39157423, fax. +45-39157460 e-mail: [email protected] Seismology: Marco Mucciarelli Universita della Basilicata Di.S.G.GCampus Macchia Romana, 85100 Potenza Italytel. (39) 0971-205094, fax. (39) 0971-205070 e-mail: [email protected] Climate: Yu Shaocai Atmospheric Sciences Modeling Division (E243-01), National Exposure Research Laboratory U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyRTP, NC 27711, USA tel. +1-919-541-0362, fax. +1-919-541-1379 e-mail: [email protected] Atmospheric Chemistry: Kostas Kourtidis Department of Environmental Engineering,School of Engineering, Demokritus University of ThraceVas. Sofias 12, GR-67100 Xanthi, Greecetel. +30-25410-79383, fax. +30-25410-79379 e-mail: [email protected] GENERAL CONTACT For general matters please contact Kostas Kourtidis, at: [email protected] SUBMISSION OF MATERIAL For material submission, please contact the Editor-in-chief or the appropriate Section Editor.ADVERTISING For advertising information, please contact: [email protected] TECHNICAL For technical questions, please contact: [email protected]
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The sites of the Assembly have been greatly improved as compared to the EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly 2003:
- posters, exhibition, additional meeting and lecture rooms and large Internet and Wlan sites are now located in an additional 10.000 sqm building, the Exhibition Centre.
- the tent on Esplanade is for registration only with separate space for pre- and on-site registrants
- the Congress Centre is reserved for oral sessions only with AGORA 2 and 3 for seating and Wlan areas.
All poster boards are now landscape of 2 m (width) x 1 m (height) in size, put up in a straight rather than in a zick-zack arrangement, plus a power socket for additional Laptop/Mac presentations.
Thus, for EGU 2004 there will be 10.000 sqm more space for posters and the exhibition, more lecture and meeting rooms, better catering facilities and more science to enjoy.
The deadline for submission of abstracts expired on 11 January 2004. The deadlines for pre-registration and for pre-hotel booking are 08 April 2004 (on-site registration and booking of accommodation on-site is, of course, also possible).
More info on the Assembly, to take place in Nice, France, 25 - 30 April 2004, can be found at
www.copernicus.org/EGU/ga/egu04
EGU Meeting Office
Improved Meeting Sitesat the forthcoming EGU Assembly
The sites of the Nice EGU Assembly 2004 have been greatly improved as compared to the EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly 2003
New open access journal of the European Geosciences Union:
Biogeosciences (BG) The editorial board announces the launch of a new journal on biogeosciences
12 March 2004.- It is our pleasure to announce the launch of a new open access journal of the European Geosciences Union: Biogeosciences (BG).
The main fields covered are:- Biodiversity and ecosystem function- Biogeochemistry- Biogeophysics- Earth system sciences- Paleobiogeosciences- Astrobiology and ExobiologyBiogeosciences has an innovative
two-stage publication process which involves a scientific discussion forum (Biogeosciences Discussions) and exploits the full potential of the Internet to:
- foster scientific discussion, - enhance the effectiveness and
transparency of scientific quality assurance,
- enable rapid publication, - make scientific publications freely
accessible, - offer an efficient new way of
publishing special issuesThis proccess has already beeen
applied, with great success, to EGU’s journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP).
Authors are invited to submit their best papers for publication in Biogeosciences. Detailed information is available on the journal web site:
http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/bg/
Jean-Pierre Gattuso and Juergen Kesselmeier
Co-Editors-in-Chief, Biogeosciences
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18 November 2003.- Young researchers in the natural and social sciences and humanities announced the formation of the World Academy of Young Scientists (WAYS) on the closing session of the World Science Forum.
Speaking in the Hungarian parliament on World Science Day, the young scientists described their mission: to create “a permanent global network for the young scientific community that provides regular input into decision-making on science and technology.” The new organisation grows out of the International Forum for Young Scientists, a satellite event of the 1999 UNESCO-ICSU World Conference on Science. Following this meeting, UNESCO committed to the establishment of a permanent representative body for young scientists. In fulfilling this function, WAYS intends to go beyond it: providing fora, both real and virtual, in which young researchers will have the opportunity to exchange views, not just on issues of science policy, but also on their research.
A crucial aim of the new organisation (which will be open, it is envisaged, to all researchers early in their scientific careers and nominally aged between 15 and 40), is to bridge the gap between north and south. One of the young founders explained the need in terms of his own situation: Serge Sawadogo said, “I’ m doing research in malaria, a disease that ravages my country. There are no facilities in Burkina Faso to study immunogenetics, so I conduct my research in France.”
Through its activities, WAYS will seek to find practical and effective solutions in the development of science to achieve a more humane and civilised world. WAYS will hold its founding General Assembly in Tunisia during the fall of 2004. Meanwhile it is seeking the active participation of young scientists from all over the world in its development.
Interested researchers are invited to contact the WAYS Secretariat.
Peter Kerey World Academy of Young Scientists
[email protected] Tel.: +36 30 441 7679
For further information please contact:Marta Maczel - Maria Harsanyi
WAYS SecretariatTel.: +36-1-279-6119; +36-30-645-6621
[email protected] address: H-1461 Budapest
P.O. Box 372. Hungary
Young Scientists Organise Permanent Global Network
Young researchers in the natural and social sciences and humanities announced the formation of the World Academy of Young Scientists (WAYS).
Call for René Descartes prize Prize for teams having achieved outstanding scientific or technological results
from European collaborative research. Total indicative budget for this prize is one million euro.
21 January 2004.- The European Commission has published a call for proposals for the Rene Descartes prizes, funded under the ‘’science and society’’ activity of the ‘’structuring the European Research Area (ERA)’’ specific programme of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).
Prizes are available in the following categories: - Prize for teams having achieved outstanding scientific or
technological results from European collaborative research in any field of science, including the economic, social and human sciences (4.3.4.2ai in the work programme).
The total indicative budget for this prize is one million euro. The minimum amount for a prize will be 200,000 euro.
- Prize for organisations or individuals having achieved outstanding results in science communication. (4.3.4.2aii in the work programme). European and national organisations which carry out awards in the following fields are invited to
send proposals for: - professional scientists engaged in science communication
to the public; - press articles contributing to the popularisation of
science; - scientific documentaries; - popular science books; - innovative action for science communication; - editorial policy for the promotion of science; - scientific television/radio programme. The total indicative budget for this prize is 250,000 euro.
The minimum amount for a prize will be 50,000 euro. The deadline for applying is 11.5.2004.
Full details of this announcement atwww.cordis.lu/descartes/
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ESF Call: Investigating Life in Extreme Environments
A Call for Expression of Interest from the Standing Committee for Life and Environmental Sciences (LESC) together with ESF’s Expert Committees: the ESF Marine Board (EMB), the European Polar Board (EPB) and
the European Space Science Committee (ESSC).
Primitive and complex life forms are capable of surviving within a wide range of extreme environmental dynamics in the polar and marine realms. There is also increasing evidence of potential analogue environments in the space domain as we begin to explore planetary systems. Some common and inter-linked parameters may be identified from the micro to macro scales, including issues such as genetic adaptation, heat regulation, and for higher life forms, the psychological impact of living in a harsh environment.
ESF’s Standing Committee for Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences together with ESF’s Expert Committees (EMB, EPB, ESSC) have identified the topic Investigating Life in Extreme Environments as an important area that should be addressed through broad European scientific and technological activities. The main purpose of this Call is to identify key challenging topics from any discipline in this area and investigate the best ways to explore them.
This consultation process will provide ESF with the views of the European scientific community on these issues. All
Expression of Interest received will be synthesised in order to identify key topics of interest to be developed at the European level.
Submissions of Expression of Interest are invited from researchers based in Europe. The abstract should be submitted by March 23, 2004 and should not exceed 400 words.
A panel will discuss the received ideas (Expressions of Interest) in the last week of April, 2004. All scientists putting forward ideas will be informed about the outcome of this exercise. The most engaging ideas will be pursued in a collaborative way through ESF-managed workshop(s) to be held in 2004/2005.
Please send Expressions of Interest, and any questions to:
Nicolas WalterEuropean Science Foundation
Email:[email protected]
Record summers might become more commonLast summer’s European heatwave high temperatures were far outside the range of past observations.
Scientists at ETH Zurich and MeteoSwiss, in an article in Nature, to account for this observation,propose that in addition to a general rise in temperatures, summer temperature variability
is likely to increase in Europe.
08 January 2004.- Summer 2003, in much of Europe, broke previous records, with temperatures five degrees celsius above long-term averages. This resulted in forest fires, serious crop losses, water shortages and deaths from the heat. An important question is to establish how such an unusual climatic event can be reconciled with long-term data, and how it can be explained. Scientists from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at the ETH Zurich and from MeteoSwiss have now proposed a possible explanation. The results of their research –financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the EU project PRUDENCE – have been published in the journal Nature.
ETH Professor Christoph Schar suggests that the reason for the unusual conditions last summer may be found in an increase in climate variability, i.e., stronger fluctuations from one summer to the next. As a result of climate change, not only mean temperatures but also the variability around the mean may increase. This makes extremely hot summers more likely. The same applies for the low precipitation amounts. However, despite the mean warming cool rainy summers may still occur from time to time.
The calculations are based on a scenario for the period from 2071 to 2100. This scenario is based on the assumption
that the concentration of greenhouse gases rises to twice the current level by the end of the century. For their projections the ETH research team adopted a new approach, using a regional climate model. This allows for a more detailed description of the climate and water cycle than is possible with a global model alone. The record summer is comparable to the anticipated mean temperature and precipitation conditions for the final third of the century.
The research was funded by the National Centre of Competence in Research on Climate (NCCR climate) and the EU project PRUDENCE. NCCR climate is a network of some 100 scientists working in seven partner organisations, one of which is the ETH Zurich. The Leading House for the programme is the University of Bern. NCCR Climate is backed by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Reference URL for the Prudence project:http://prudence.dmi.dk
Source: AlphaGalileo
THE EGGS 6
AGU Adopts New Statement on Human Impacts on Climate
The American Geophysical Union has adopted a new position statement, “Human Impacts on Climate.” It was adopted by a unanimous vote of the AGU Council at its
regular meeting in San Francisco, California, on December 12.
WASHINGTON, 13 Jan. 2004.- The American Geophysical Union has adopted a new position statement, “Human Impacts on Climate.” It was adopted by a unanimous vote of the AGU Council at its regular meeting in San Francisco, California, on December 12. The new statement replaces “Climate Change and Greenhouse Gases,” which was adopted in 1998 and reaffirmed in 2002 (AGU position statements expire in four years, unless extended by the Council).
In a press release, AGU announced the new position statement:
“Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth’s climate. These effects add to natural influences that have been present over Earth’s history. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.
Human impacts on the climate system include increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons and their substitutes, methane, nitrous oxide, etc.), air pollution, increasing concentrations of airborne particles, and land alteration. A particular concern is that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide may be rising faster than at any time in Earth’s history, except possibly following rare events like impacts from large extraterrestrial objects.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have increased since the mid-1700s through fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, with more than 80% of this increase occurring since 1900. Moreover, research indicates that increased levels of carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. It is virtually certain that increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will cause global surface climate to be warmer.
The complexity of the climate system makes it difficult to predict some aspects of human-induced climate change: exactly how fast it will occur, exactly how much it will change, and exactly where those changes will take place. In contrast, scientists are confident in other predictions. Mid-continent warming will be greater than over the oceans, and there will be greater warming at higher latitudes. Some polar and glacial ice will melt, and the oceans will warm; both effects will contribute to higher sea levels. The hydrologic cycle will change and intensify, leading to changes in water supply as well as flood and drought patterns. There will be considerable regional variations in the resulting impacts.
Scientists’ understanding of the fundamental processes responsible for global climate change has greatly improved during the last decade, including better representation of
carbon, water, and other biogeochemical cycles in climate models. Yet, model projections of future global warming vary, because of differing estimates of population growth, economic activity, greenhouse gas emission rates, changes in atmospheric particulate concentrations and their effects, and also because of uncertainties in climate models.
Actions that decrease emissions of some air pollutants will reduce their climate effects in the short term. Even so, the impacts of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations would remain.
The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change states as an objective the ‘...stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.’ AGU believes that no single threshold level of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere exists at which the beginning of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system can be defined. Some impacts have already occurred, and for increasing concentrations there will be increasing impacts. The unprecedented increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, together with other human influences on climate over the past century and those anticipated for the future, constitute a real basis for concern.
Enhanced national and international research and other efforts are needed to support climate related policy decisions. These include fundamental climate research, improved observations and modeling, increased computational capability, and very importantly, education of the next generation of climate scientists. AGU encourages scientists worldwide to participate in climate research, education, scientific assessments, and policy discussions. AGU also urges that the scientific basis for policy discussions and decision-making be based upon objective assessment of peer-reviewed research results.
Science provides society with information useful in dealing with natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and drought, which improves our ability to predict and prepare for their adverse effects. While human-induced climate change is unique in its global scale and long lifetime, AGU believes that science should play the same role in dealing with climate change. AGU is committed to improving the communication of scientific information to governments and private organizations so that their decisions on climate issues will be based on the best science.
The global climate is changing and human activities are contributing to that change. Scientific research is required to improve our ability to predict climate change and its impacts on countries and regions around the globe. Scientific research provides a basis for mitigating the harmful effects of global climate change through decreased human influences (e.g.,
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slowing greenhouse gas emissions, improving land management practices), technological advancement (e.g., removing carbon from the atmosphere), and finding ways for communities to adapt and become resilient to extreme events.
Adopted by AGU Council, December, 2003.”
AGU Release No. 03-35Contact:
Harvey [email protected]
Key data on women and science released by the EC The Commission has just released “She Figures 2003”, a unique compilation of key data, which presents the
latest figures on the participation of women in scientific education and employment.
Quote from the Press Release:
“The number of women researchers in universities and businesses across Europe is on the increase. Yet there are signs that government research institutes in some countries are losing researchers, both men and women. Despite accounting for 40% of today’s Ph.D. graduates in Europe, women represent only 15% of researchers in enterprises, and one third of the researchers in government and higher education research institutions. And less than one person in ten of the top layer of academic staff is a woman in six Member States. (...) CEOs of top European companies (...) signed a commitment to boost the number of women researchers in their companies, and make the most of their talent. (...)
‘She Figures 2003’ is a handy reference tool that will enable policy-makers to review the latest European and national trends for both highly qualified women and men. It presents descriptive statistics and indicators for EU Member States and Associated Countries as well as explanatory texts and methodological notes. As such, the document signals a new era in the availability of sex-disaggregated data on human resources in the European Research Area. Only 15 % women in Business Enterprise Sector She Figures 2003 finds overall healthy growth rates in the numbers of researchers in the Higher Education sector in nearly all Member States and Candidate Countries, and among industrial researchers in Portugal, Spain, Finland, Italy, Lithuania, Cyprus, Norway and Hungary between 1998-2001. However, government research institutions and industry lost research staff, both women and men, in about
half of the Associated countries during the same period. The percentage of research posts held by women is half as much in the Business Enterprise Sector (15%) than in the Higher Education Sector (34%) or Government Research institutions (31%). Between 1999 and 2000, the average percentage of women researchers for the EU-15 increased slightly by 2% in the Higher Education Sector (from 32% to 34%). Why are women so under-represented? Level of qualification can no longer be regarded as an excuse for the under-representation of women as researchers. However, the statistics presented in She Figures 2003 suggest that appropriately qualified women may be less likely than their male counterparts to opt for research posts in R&D, and are more likely to prefer technical occupations. Since today’s graduates are tomorrow’s scientists, She Figures 2003 examines the graduate statistics for 2001 and has discovered that the EU-15 average for women graduates from doctoral / Ph.D. education has just reached 40%. In all of the Associated countries except Hungary, the Czech Republic and Norway, more than 40% of graduates from these advanced programmes are women.
In six out of the 14 Member States presented in She Figures 2003, there is still less than one woman for every ten men in the top echelons of academia. From 1999-2000, there was a slight overall increase from 11.6% to 13.2% women in the top grades of University staff, but in Austria and the Netherlands only 6% of senior academic staff are women. Just 3% of the top layer of academic staff in engineering sciences in Portugal (‘Professor Catedratico’) are women and this figure is as low as 1.7% in Austria. Men are overall three times
more likely than women to reach the most senior levels. Only 6.4% of women academics reach these top grades in the EU, whereas the same recognition is reserved for as many as 18.8% of men. Women also appear to be blocked from membership of scientific boards. In eight out of 15 Member States and in nine out of 11 Associated Countries, less than 25% of the members of scientific boards are women. These figures are as low as 6.6% in Luxembourg, 10.3% in Belgium and 11.8% in Austria. This calls for an urgent review of recruitment strategies and appointment procedures. The lack of women in senior, decision-making positions in science means that their individual and collective opinions are less likely to be voiced and heard in the crucially important ‘science and society’ dialogue.
She Figures 2003 marks the beginning of a comprehensive collection of sex-disaggregated data on women in science. All the countries involved in this activity will continue monitoring these indicators in the future, in order to measure the rapid change occurring in the gender dynamics of the European Research Area. Bringing together this data in a co-ordinated way is the result of a specific effort on the part of the Statistical Correspondents of the Helsinki Group on Women and Science.”
The full report can be found at:http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/
science-society/highlights_en.html andh t t p : / / e u r o p a . e u . i n t / c o m m /
research/science-society/women/wssi/publications_en.html
European Commission Press Release
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Global Allergy and Asthma European Network GA²LEN, a €29 million Network of Excellence funded through the EU Sixth Research Framework
Programme (FP6 2002-2006), will study allergy and asthma throughout the course of life.
9 February 2004.- GA²LEN, a €29 million Network of Excellence funded through the EU Sixth Research Framework Programme (FP6 2002-2006), will study allergy and asthma throughout the course of life. According to an EC Press release this will include intrauterine life and foeto-maternal interactions, the relation between genetic and environmental factors in early life and the development of allergies, via the analysis of statistical samples of existing and newborn Europeans. The study aims to create an international network of European centres of excellence which will conduct multidisciplinary research programmes
on issues relating to the environment (including outdoor and indoor pollution), nutrition, lifestyle (including occupation), infections and genetic susceptibility. Genetic and epidemiological studies will address the relation between genetics and the environment, which might underpin the dramatic increase in allergy rates in the EU over the last few decades.
The project also encompasses the effect of nutritional patterns on allergic disposition through epidemiological studies focusing on specific regions. The dissemination of information to patients and the public is necessary in order to reduce the socio-economic
impact of allergy and asthma. The 5-year project is co-ordinated by Dr. Paul Vancauwenberge, University of Ghent (Belgium) and the EU will provide funds of €14.4 million contributing to the total budget of €29 million.
More information can be found at:http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/
headlines/news/article_04_02_03_en.html
The Network was launched at an event in Hotel Le Meridien in Brussels on 12 February 2004.
Source: EC Research web site
Research Announcement The European Space Agency together with NASA, JAXA, DLR, CNES, CSA, and NSAU are soliciting
proposals for Space Life Science experiments.
Noordwijk, 3/2/2004.- The European Space Agency together with NASA, JAXA, DLR, CNES, CSA, and NSAU are soliciting proposals for Space Life Science experiments to be conducted on the International Space Station (ISS). Please notice that the ESA Announcement also includes additional research opportunities not described in the International Research Announcement.
Deadlines are:For Notices of intent: 2 March 2004For proposals: 5 May 2004
The complete text of the research announcement can be viewed and downloaded at
http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/ILSRA
Didier Schmitt,Head of Life Sciences Unit,
Timothy Killeen Elected President-Elect of AGU Timothy Killeen, Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder,
Colorado, has been elected President-Elect of the American Geophysical Union.
WASHINGTON, 17 Feb-ruary 2004.- With a press release, the American Geophysical Union announced today that Timothy Killeen, Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, has been elected President-Elect of AGU. According to the press release, Killeen will become President-Elect on July 1, 2004, and will assume the presidency of the 41,000 member organization on July 1, 2006. The current President-Elect, John A. Orcutt, Professor of Geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, becomes President on
July 1, 2004, succeeding Robert E. Dickinson of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The other Union officers elected were Terry E. Tullis of Brown University as General Secretary and Anny A. Cazenave of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales in Toulouse, France, as International Secretary (both re-elected).
AGU members also elected presidents-elect and other officers of the organization’s eleven scientific sections. They take office on July 1, 2004, and the presidents-elect become section presidents two years later.
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ESA to select new Earth Explorer missions This spring it will be decided which of the six candidate Earth Explorer missions are to be selected for
development. Before decisions are taken, the user community is invited to express their views.
5 February 2004.- An important milestone for ESA’s Living Planet Programme is to be reached this spring when it will be decided which of the six candidate Earth Explorer missions are to be selected for development. Before decisions are taken, the user community is invited to express their views at the Earth Explorer User Consultation Meeting which will be held on 19-20 April at ESA’s ESRIN facility in Frascati, Italy.
Following the successful implementation of the ERS satellites and Envisat, which address Earth science issues of a global nature, Earth Explorers are smaller research missions dedicated to specific aspects of our Earth environment. The first four Earth Explorers were selected for development in 1999, the first of which is due for launch at the end of this year. Over the last two years the Agency has been working on the next generation of candidate missions and is currently evaluating the resulting six satellite concepts. Before the Earth Science Advisory Committee provides recommendations to the Agency, the six missions will be reviewed at the Earth Explorer User Consultation Meeting.
Meeting registration details and the Agenda can be found at: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/EEUCM/index.html
The six candidate missions are: EarthCARE (Earth, Clouds,
Aerosols and Radiation ExplorerThe biggest scientific uncertainties in
climate change prediction are associated with the effect that clouds and aerosols have on the Earth’s radiative budget. Although it is known that high-altitude clouds warm the Earth while clouds lower in the atmosphere contribute to cooling, it is unclear whether clouds have an overall warming or cooling effect on the Earth. Aerosols can also have both a warming and a cooling effect. Estimates of global warming currently have an uncertainty of 4-5°C. The main aim of the EarthCARE mission is to measure clouds and aerosols and
the geophysical parameters associated with them in order to minimise climate predication uncertainty.
SPECTRA (Surface Processes and Ecosystem Changes Through Response Analysis)
The release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by human activity is recognised as one of the main drivers of climate change, therefore a better understanding of the biosphere’s ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere is extremely important. In order to address issues such as climate change, the greenhouse effect and environmental degradation it is vital to understand more about the interactions between terrestrial ecosystems, in particular vegetation, and the atmosphere. The objective of this mission is to describe, understand and model the role of terrestrial vegetation in the global carbon cycle and its response to climate variability.
WALES (Water vapour and Lidar Experiment in Space)
Water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas and knowledge of its distribution is crucial to understanding the global energy and water cycle, cloud interaction, radiation and dynamics and transport processes in the Earth’s atmosphere. Water vapour data are therefore of primary importance for climate and numerical weather prediction. The objective of WALES is to overcome the shortcomings of radiosondes and passive satellite sensors by providing global water vapour observations in the troposphere and lowermost stratosphere with high vertical resolution and accuracy. It will also provide accurate measurements of areas with low humidity and low temperature such as polar regions.
ACE+ (Atmosphere and Climate Explorer)
Accurate observations of humidity and temperature in the troposphere and stratosphere, including their variability, are highly important in climate change research. The aim is to monitor climatic variations and trends throughout the free troposphere and stratosphere and during different seasons so as to improve
the understanding of climate feedbacks. ACE+ will establish highly accurate and vertically resolved climatologies of humidity in the troposphere and of temperature in both the free troposphere and the stratosphere. This will allow the validation and improvement of atmospheric models in support of climate research and numerical weather prediction.
EGPM (European contribution to the Global Precipitation Monitoring mission)
Compared with the Earth’s total water budget the amount that is available as freshwater is extremely small. Precipitation is a crucial element affecting life on Earth and constitutes the foremost exchange process within the water cycle. EGPM is part of the bigger international GPM (Global Precipitation Monitoring) mission, which aims to measure precipitation all over the world every three hours. EGPM has its own unique objectives to measure light precipitation and snowfall. The mission will improve rainfall estimation accuracy, enhance the detectability of light rain and snowfall, particularly over land and at high altitudes, and it will provide a significant contribution to the monitoring and understanding of hazardous storms along the coasts of the Mediterranean.
SWARM (a constellation of small satellites to study the dynamics of the Earth’s magnetic field)
Magnetic field plays an important role in many of the physical processes throughout the Universe. The Earth is surrounded by a large and complicated magnetic field caused to a large extent by a self-sustaining dynamo operating in the fluid outer-core. Currents flowing in the ionosphere, magnetosphere and oceans, and magnetised rock and currents induced in the Earth by time-varying fields also influence the magnetic field. SWARM will provide the best ever survey of the geomagnetic field and its temporal evolution, offering new insights into the composition and processes in the interior and the surroundings of the Earth, thereby improving our knowledge of the Earth’s interior and climate.
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Paris, 11 February 2004.- Beagle 2, the British-built element of ESA’s Mars Express mission, has failed to communicate since its first radio contact was missed shortly after it was due to land on Mars on Christmas Day. The Beagle 2 Management Board met in London on Friday 6 February and, following an assessment of the situation, declared Beagle 2 lost.
Today, the UK Science Minister Lord Sainsbury and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that an ESA/UK inquiry would be held into the failure the Beagle 2 lander.
Lord Sainsbury, of the Department of Trade and Industry, said: “I believe such an inquiry will be very useful. The reasons identified by the Inquiry Board will allow the experience gained from Beagle 2 to be used for the benefit of future European planetary exploration missions.”
The Inquiry Board is to be chaired by the ESA Inspector General, Rene Bonnefoy. The UK deputy chairman will be David Link MBE.
The inquiry will investigate whether it can be established why Beagle 2 may have failed and set out any lessons which can be learnt for future missions. Such inquiries are routine in the event of unsuccessful space missions and this one will help inform future ESA robotic missions, to Mars and other bodies in the solar system.
The Inquiry Board will be set up under normal ESA procedures by the Inspector General. Because the inquiry is into a British-built lander, it will report to Lord Sainsbury as well as to the Director General of ESA.
Its terms of reference are as follows:1. Technical Issues· Assess the available data/documentation pertaining
to the in-orbit operations, environment and performance characterisation, and to the on-ground tests and analyses during development;
· Identify possible issues and shortcomings in the above and in the approach adopted, which might have contributed to the loss of the mission;
2. Programmatics· Analyse the programmatic environment (i.e. decision-
making processes, level of funding and resources, management and responsibilities, interactions between the various entities) throughout the development phase;
· Identify possible issues and shortcomings which might
have contributed to the loss of the mission.The Board, made up of people with no direct involvement
in the Beagle 2 mission, is expected to begin work shortly and report by the end of March 2004.
The key players in the Beagle 2 mission, including Colin Pillinger, the Open University, the University of Leicester, the National Space Science Centre, EADS-Astrium, and BNSC partners have all welcome the setting up of the Inquiry Board.
The Beagle 2 project to make a lander element of the ESA Mars Express mission was headed by the Open University, providing the science lead, and EADS-Astrium, the prime contractor responsible for the main design, development and management of the lander.
David Link is a former Director of Science and Radar Observation at Matra Marconi Space, now EADS-UK.
Beagle 2 was designed to look for signs of life on Mars. It was to parachute down to the surface of the planet and collect soil samples, which would have been analysed for signs of past and present biological activity. The lander was also packed with a suite of instruments to take pictures, acquire geological information and study the weather, including temperature, pressure and wind.
The Beagle 2 lander was funded through a partnership arrangement involving the Open University, EADS-Astrium, the DTI, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the Office of Science and Technology and ESA. Funding also came from the National Space Science Centre and the Wellcome Foundation. UK principal investigators for Beagle 2 came from the Open University (gas analysis package), Leicester University (environmental sensors and x-ray spectrometer) and Mullard Space Science Laboratory (imaging systems).
The ESA Mars Express spacecraft, the mother ship, successfully entered orbit around Mars on Christmas Day and, following a series of orbital manoeuvres, has been performing excellently as it starts its two-year global survey of the planet. Among first results announced on 23 January were unprecedented 3-D high-resolution images of the surface and the detection of water ice on the South Pole.
ESA Media RelationsPress Release 09-2004
UK and ESA announce Beagle 2 inquiry Today, the UK Science Minister Lord Sainsbury and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that an
ESA/UK inquiry would be held into the failure the Beagle 2 lander. The Inquiry Board is to be chaired by the ESA Inspector General, Rene Bonnefoy.
The first-generation Earth Explorers are all currently under implementation. CryoSat will be launched at the end of 2004 and is dedicated to monitoring precise changes in the thickness of polar ice-sheets and floating sea-ice. It will be followed by the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) scheduled for launch in 2006, which will measure
high-accuracy gravity gradients and provide global models of the Earth’s gravity field and of the geoid. In 2007, the Atmospheric Dynamics Mission (ADM-Aeolus) will be launched to make novel advances in global wind profile observations. The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission will also be launched in 2007 and will provide global observations of soil moisture and
ocean salinity. The Earth Explorer User Consultation
Meeting is an important milestone in the Living Planet Programme that will pave the way for the continuation of Earth Observation missions from space to advance our understanding of the Earth system.
From the ESA Portal
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Predicting recovery of acidified freshwaters in Europe and Canada Special issue of Hydrology and Earth System Science (HESS)
A Special issue of HESS (Volume 7, Number 4, 2003) presents papers from various projects (also from the RECOVER:2010 and EMERGE projects) aiming at predicting future water chemistry in Europe and Canada given standard scenarios of future emissions of S and N. Mountainous lake regions in Europe and Eastern Canada are included in these predictions. The articles can be viewed online at
http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/hess/hs7/contents7-4.htm
NPG Special issue on the ocassion of the 70th birthday of Prof. A.D. Kirwan Jr.
Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (NPG) Volume 11, Number 1, 2004 dedicated to A.D. Kinley Jr.
Below the Preface of the Special issue, by Al Osborne:
“Prof. A. D. Kirwan, Jr. (Denny to his friends) has had a long and distinguished career as a physical oceanographer. Denny is currently program director of Physical Ocean Science and Engineering at the University of Delaware. He has held academic positions at Old Dominion University, the University of South Florida, Texas A&M University, and New York University. He was program director for the Physical and Chemical Oceanography Program, Office of Naval Research, and worked as a research scientist for both Exxon Production Research Company and Science Applications, Inc. While at Texas A&M University, he developed technology enabling scientists to measure surface currents by satellite-tracked drifting buoys. More recently, he has been active in applying dynamical systems methods to oceanography.
He is author/co-author of over 70 reviewed papers and articles in scientific journals, and he is a former editor of Journal of Geophysical Research and of Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics.
Dr. Kirwan has served on a number of national and international oversight committees for ocean research. Dr. Kirwan’s awards include a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Freie Universitat, West Berlin, and the Outstanding Performance Award at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He had been an invited lecturer at several foreign institutions. His career has included active duty as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.
His national and international memberships include the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for Advancement of Science, the Society of Engineering Science, the American Physical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, the European Geophysical Union, and Sigma Xi.
Kirwan has developed significant research collaborations with Brown University in Rhode Island, the California Institute of Technology, and Old Dominion University in Virginia; government research laboratories such as the Naval Research Laboratory and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) Undersea Research Centre in Italy.
Kirwan received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and his doctorate from Texas A&M University. His book Mother Nature’s Two Laws: Ringmasters for Circus Earth, recently published by World Scientific, introduces nonscientists to thermodynamics and explains how this science is applied in issues of societal concern. Kirwan has also co-edited the book Rapid Environmental Assessment published in 1998.
We would all like to congratulate Denny for his 70th birthday! We all have fond memories of having worked with him in many fruitful collaborations over the years. This issue is dedicated to him as a symbol of the scientific excellence that he represents to all of his many friends and colleagues, the level of excellence to which we would all strive to achieve.”
NPG, Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (2004) 11: 1 can be viewed online at
http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/npg/11/contents1.htm
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Ioannis Daglis and Syun-Ichi Akasofu on the splendors of aurora
AuroraThe magnificent northern lights
The aurora is beautiful, spectacular, splendid, and appears quite frequent - almost nightly in the polar sky. Appearing in the form of majestic, colourful, irregular lights in the night sky, the aurora has a variety of shapes, colours, and structures, and continuously changing in time. Everybody who has seen the Northern Lights will agree that they are nature’s optical poetry. Physicists say that the aurora is just a large-scale electrical discharge phenomenon in the high-altitude atmosphere, resulting from quantum leaps in oxygen and nitrogen atoms. Indeed, the aurora is atomic physics, but the aurora was also a superstitious subject in mythology and fairy tales. From ancient times, it has filled people with awe and wonder, with delight and pleasure, with both joy and fear. It has inspired artists and it also terrified people who thought that the end of the world was approaching. Exact explanations of the phenomenon had to wait until modern space and particle physics was developed in the 20th century and knowledge about details in the Earth’s electromagnetic environment became available through spacecraft measurements.
Image 1: Auroral bands with rays, Alaska. © Jan Curtis
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Northern Lights appear in a narrow annular belt around both the northern and southern geomagnetic poles, over Fairbanks, Tromso and Kiruna, in a variable pattern. Seen from there, the display starts with a phosphorescent glow over the horizon. The glow dies out and comes back, and then an arch is lit. It drifts up over in the sky as new arches are lit and follow the first one. Small waves and curls move along the arches. Then, within a few minutes a dramatic change is seen in the sky. A hailstorm of charged particles hit the upper atmosphere in what is called an auroral substorm. Rays of light shoot down from space, forming light draperies, which spread all over the sky. They really compare to draperies or curtains that are flickering in the wind. They also remind us of Swan Lake and other dance performances. We can see a violet and a red trimming at the lower and upper ends, or the colours all mixed together, woven into each other. The curtains disappear and form all over again by new rays of light shooting down from space. Above our head, we can see rays converging to a point in the sky, forming what is called an auroral corona. After 10 to 20 minutes the storm is over and the activity decreases. The bands are spread out, disintegrating in a diffuse light all over the sky. We can not see individual pockets of light, but the total effect is bright enough to enable us to make out details of the countryside around us. If we look very carefully, we can see the remains of the Northern Lights display as faint, pulsating flames. Clouds of light are turning on and off regularly every few to tens of seconds by an invisible switch. Then nature’s own gigantic light-show is over.
What exactly happens? In the highest reaches of the atmosphere, above about a hundred kilometres,
oxygen and nitrogen atoms and molecules are energized and/or ionized by energetic electrons. In this transition region between the earth’s atmosphere and near-earth space free electrons abound. Accelerated by electric fields in the magnetosphere, a comet-shaped structure around the Earth, energetic electrons streaming along geomagnetic field lines hit and excite atoms and molecules. The auroral light results from the de-excitation of these particles. The colour, shape, and intensity depend on the electromagnetic forces that shoot electrons downward into the upper atmosphere.
Since prehistoric times, there have been many beliefs about the Northern Lights. The Inuit people in Northeast Canada have the following belief regarding auroral displays: “The sky is a huge dome
of hard material arched over the flat earth and outside of it there is light. In the dome there are a large number of small holes and through these holes you can see the light from the outside when it is dark. And through these holes the spirits of the dead can pass into the heavenly regions. The way to heaven leads over a narrow bridge which spans an enormous abyss. The spirits that were already in heaven light torches to guide the feet of the new arrivals. These torches are called the Northern Lights.” The Eskimos of the lower Yukon River believed that the aurora was the dance of animal spirits (deer, seals and salmon).
In Middle-Age central Europe, the Northern Lights were considered a bad omen. They warned of illness, plague and death. When red, which is the most common colour of aurora at mid to low latitudes (i.e. central Europe), they signalled the outbreak of war. On the contrary, up in the North, in
Image 2: Aurora in Manitoba, Canada. © Warren Justice
Image 3: Auroral bands in Alaska. © Carolyn Szepanski
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Scandinavia, people’s conceptions were more characterized by wonder and awe for this impressive phenomenon. One was warned to step carefully during auroral displays and in no way should the Northern Lights be frightened by waving, whistling, staring or by showing any other form of disrespect.
Aurora has always been a particularly rare phenomenon in low latitudes and had astonished people in antiquity. Accordingly, it has been recorded with effervescent descriptions in the Theogony of Hesiod and the Old Testament. Hesiod, one of the greatest poets of the ancient Greek civilization, mentioned “blazing skies” and “flaming sky dragons” in his Theogony (8th century B.C.). In the Old Testament, Ezekiel’s vision (6th century B.C.) of a burning wheel way up in the middle of the sky can be interpreted as the account of either a comet or an aurora (Ezekiel, 1:1-28). Nevertheless, Ezekiel’s interpretation of the phenomenon was clearly religious. The first attempt for a rational explanation of the bright celestial appearance is often credited to Aristotle. Instead of invoking supernatural powers or beasts, he described the Northern
Lights in his book Metereologia as a light resembling a shining cloud. However, the credit for the first rational, non-mythical description of the aurora belongs to two Greek philosophers from Asia Minor, who lived in the 6th century B.C., i.e. some 200 years before Aristotle: Anaximenes of Miletus (c. 585-528 B.C.) and Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570-475 BC). Anaximenes was a pioneer in the revolutionary new approach to the nature of human intellect that came to be known as natural philosophy; and for him, fundamental reality was material and mechanical. This is the viewpoint we have inherited as “scientific.” Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, wrote of “moving accumulations of burning clouds.” At about the same time, Plutarch gave a clear description of the Northern Lights, but it was probably a quotation from missing writings of Anaxagoras: “… there was an enormous and furious figure in the sky. It was like a flaming cloud, which did not stay at its position but moved windingly and regularly …”.
In the fourth century B.C., Theophrastus of Eresos, a student of Plato and Aristotle, was said to be one of the first to observe sunspots, a solar feature that is linked to the appearance of aurora. Many centuries later, in 1610, the sunspots were rediscovered by Galileo. Galileo again, in 1619, or, according to others, the French scientist and philosopher Pierre Gassendi in 1622 was said to “christen” the Northern Lights with the name that is still used: Aurora Borealis. The etymology of the name is “Northern Dawn”, from the ancient Greek goddess of dawn Eos (called Aurora in Latin), and the word boreios (Borealis in Latin), meaning “northern” in Greek. The existence of “Southern Lights” (Aurora Australis) was, of course, unknown in Europe. The Aurora Australis was first sighted by Europeans in the end of the 18th century, during the expeditions of Captain James Cook around Australia and the South Pacific. Cook’s crew on the HMS Endeavour recorded that “a phenomenon appeared in the heavens in many things resembling the aurora borealis”. Historical documents from China later revealed that an aurora was observed on the same night, 16 September 1770, in the Northern Hemisphere. Thus, this was the first ever recorded sighting of mirror – or conjugate – auroras.
Soon after Galileo, Descartes observed and commented
Image 4: Aurora over Yellowknife, Canada. © Peter Jeffery
Image 5: Magnificent overhead aurora. © Jan Curtis.
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on the Northern Lights, but due to the extremely low solar activity over the interval 1645 to 1715 (called the Maunder minimum) there were no northern lights to observe and the relevant discussions subsided. Following the spectacular auroral displays in Europe in March 1716, Edmund Halley considered particles that move along the field lines of the earth’s magnetic field, but his wholly terrestrial origin for the lights proved unsatisfactory. In 1733, the French scientist Jean Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan correctly proposed an interaction of zodiacal light material with the terrestrial atmosphere and even noted a connection with sunspots, but both he and so great a mind as Leonard Euler, who proposed a theory based on reflected sunlight in 1746, moved a step backward by rejecting Halley’s link to geomagnetic phenomena. Alexander von Humboldt supported Halley’s conception by showing a correlation between auroras and geomagnetic disturbances in 1806, by observing slight changes of the tip of a magnetic needle at the time of auroral displays. Despite von Humboldt’s support to Halley, the theories of de Mairan and Euler remained the leading rivals. In 1741, the connection between the Northern Lights and magnetic activity was also proposed by the Swedish professor of astronomy Anders Celsius, who devised the Celsius thermometer.
At the end of the 19th century, Kristian Olaf Birkeland, a famous Norwegian scientist, organized a series of expeditions to the high-latitude regions of his country,
where he established a network of magnetic field observatories. The results of his expeditions produced the first determination of the global pattern of electric currents in the auroral region from ground magnetic field measurements. Birkeland is also known for his magnetized terrella, which was suspended in a vacuum chamber, simulating the Earth. Birkeland directed an electron beam toward the terrella and noticed that the beam was guided toward the magnetic poles and produced rings of light around the poles. He consequently concluded that the aurora could be produced in a similar way. Based on his terrella experiments, he proposed a theory, according to which energetic electrons are ejected from sunspots on the solar surface, then directed to the Earth, and finally are guided to the Earth’s polar regions by the geomagnetic field where they produce the visible aurora. This device is now displayed
at the University of Tromso. The identity of the particles that actually produce the aurora remained uncertain for a long time, although laboratory experience (such as Birkeland’s) suggested that these particles behaved like electrons. Eventually, half a century after Birkeland’s terrella experiments, auroral electrons were observed by detectors aboard a rockoon, a combination of rocket and balloon, launched in 1954 into the aurora by James Van Allen’s team at the University of Iowa.
In the early 20th century, Carl Stormer, known for his theoretical work on the orbits of particle trapped by
Image 6: During the recent November storm, red aurora reached as far south as Athens, Greece! © Anthony Ayiomamitis.
Image 7: “Curly” aurora over Greenland and Iceland. © DMSP
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the geomagnetic field, used triangulation to estimate that auroras occur most frequently around at 100 km altitude. In the end of the 1950s a new instrument was developed, the “all-sky camera”, which was able to record the entire sky, from horizon to horizon, by photographing its reflection from a curved mirror. More than 100 all-sky cameras were used during the International Geophysical Year in 1957-1958, and their observations led Yasha Feldstein to propose the concept of the auroral oval - the locus of usual appearance of auroras. Since auroras are in fact three-dimensional, the auroral ovals (north and south) actually are elliptical tori around the poles. Each torus is up to 3,500 km in diameter and a few hundred kilometres thick. The two-dimensional projection of the torus reminds a belt that is wider on the night side of the Earth, and is centred on the geomagnetic pole while the earth revolves around the geographic poles. The width of the belt on the night side is up to 600 km.
The space age contributed significantly to our understanding of the aurora by opening several new ways of studying it. The most important one has been imaging the aurora from above by satellites, which permitted simultaneous observations of large areas of aurora and spectacular views. Spacecraft can carry imaging cameras that use filters to observe the aurora in selected wavelengths and block interference from scattered sunlight. The first imager was flown on the Canadian ISIS-2 spacecraft in 1972. It discovered the “diffuse aurora”, i.e. a continuous elliptical ring of aurora around the polar cap, which is not easily noticeable to observers on the ground.
More comprehensive observations of the aurora from above were carried out (1981 - 1987) by the US satellite Dynamics Explorer 1 (DE-1), which moved in an elongated polar orbit and operated in several modes, taking images both in the visible and in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. With a time resolution of several minutes, DE-1 was
Image 8: Large-scale image of the auroral oval from space, as seen by the DMSP satellite on 21 July 1993. © DMSP
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able to distinguish substorm phases in the morphology of the aurora, but could not resolve finer details. DE-1 further imaged a special class of auroras that are not aligned with the auroral oval but lie across it, , generally aligned with the noon-midnight meridian. Such auroras occur at quieter times. DE-1 found that at times such arcs extended completely across the oval, bridging the dark space from the nightside to the dayside. Because this pattern resembles the Greek letter theta (a circle with a bar across its middle), this auroral form was named the “theta aurora.” No good explanation exists as yet for either sunward arcs or the theta aurora.
One of the central questions has always been the origin and the acceleration of the electrons responsible for the aurora. Early researchers thought that these electrons originated far away (Birkeland believed they came from the Sun). The answer came in 1976, when Don Gurnett and Lou Frank of the University of Iowa discovered the so-called ‘inverted V’ structure in the spectra of auroral electrons; which suggested an electric field along the geomagnetic field lines. The US Air Force satellite S3-3, which discovered positive oxygen ions shooting upwards
in the auroral zone, presumably accelerated by a voltage below the satellite orbit. However, a voltage that accelerates positive ions upwards will also accelerate negative electrons downwards. Accordingly, scientists realized that the accelerating mechanism for electrons creating the aurora must have been below the spacecraft, and not in the deep magnetotail or other far-away regions where many scientists were looking for it. As the peak altitude of S3-3 was 8000 km and the O+ ions were typically observed at altitudes of the order of one Earth radius (6371 km), electron acceleration should take place quite close to Earth, at distances of about 6000 km or so.
We now know that the acceleration of electrons creating the aurora essentially is provided by electric fields existing parallel to magnetic fields or plasma instabilities. The
existence of such electric fields had been proposed in 1950 by the 1970 Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven. One would expect that voltage differences along field lines would be soon cancelled by the electrons and ions that slide along the field lines like beads. Alfven however, showed that under proper conditions, the mirror force repelling trapped particles from regions of stronger magnetic field could balance this tendency to wipe out all voltage differences. Because the magnetic field
Image 9: 3-D view of the Aurora Australis, as seen by the astronauts of the Space Shuttle mission STS-39. © NASA
Image 10: In the Middle Ages, aurora was considered a bad omen in central Europe.
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is most intense near Earth, the repulsion is strongest there too, and the voltage drop balanced by it turns out to be strongest there as well.
Currently, three auroral imaging cameras covering different parts of the spectrum (visible, UV, x-ray) are flying aboard NASA’s Polar satellite, while another imager (extreme ultraviolet) is flying aboard NASA’s IMAGE satellite. Another NASA mission, the Fast Auroral SnapshoT (FAST), was designed to resolve (as the name implies) rapid variations as it flies through auroral arcs. FAST has been investigating plasma processes occurring in the low altitude auroral acceleration region. Several coordinated studies have been using data from these three NASA spacecraft and have shed light on details of auroral dynamics. We are beginning to grasp the acceleration
process, leading to the magnificent celestial ballet of the Northern Lights. However, we are still far from understanding causes of the magnificent auroral displays associated with the auroral substorm.
Dr. Ioannis A. DaglisResearch Director, National Observatory of Athens
Athens, Greece
Dr. Syun-Ichi AkasofuProfessor, University of Alaska
Director, International Arctic Research CenterFairbanks, USA
Image 11: Image of a coloured woodcut by Wolf Drechsel, showing an auroral display over the German town of Nuremberg on October 5, 1591.
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Monday morningIn the Apollon theatre, a vast auditorium at one end of
Nice’s Acropolis congress centre, Jan Smit of Vrije University in Amsterdam is talking about the Chicxulub crater in Mexico - the site of the asteroid impact 65m years ago that seems to have killed off the dinosaurs. Smit is part of an international team that recently drilled a borehole into the rocks of the crater, and this is one of the first presentations of their results. Unfortunately, most of the people who might want to hear him are stuck in a long queue outside the centre waiting to pick up their badges and get through security.One person who made a point of getting here early enough to be sure of making the session is Gerta Keller of Princeton. Keller is the most prominent of the small band of scientists who believe that Chicxulub is not the impact that killed the dinosaurs. She nd her colleagues think that the crater was made 300,000 years before a second impact left the global layer of fallout that marks the true boundary between the Cretaceous period and the subsequent dinosaur-free Tertiary. Today she is focusing on a layer of rock deep inside Chicxulub. Smit and his colleagues think these rocks are sediments that flowed back into the crater as soon as it was made, before the global fallout thrown up by the impact had had a chance to do its falling. But on the basis of tiny fossils within them, Keller thinks the sediments represent 300,000 years of steady sedimentation between the formation of the crater and the fallout layer, which must have come from somewhere else. The opposition just doesn’t accept it, much to Keller’s frustration. “I have some samples in
which even you could see them,” she says to Smit at one point. Given that English is not her first language it’s possible that she doesn’t mean this to sound as patronising as it does.
During a coffee break I talk to one of the majority group. He tells me how important it is that a hypothesis should have insistent critics like Keller. It keeps everyone on their toes. He then tells me just how irritating it is that she won’t shut up.
Monday afternoon I am beginning to realise how vast this meeting is. There
are about 11,000 delegates, maybe more - no one is sure. The talks are divided into 22 “programme areas” corresponding to sub-disciplines or interest groups: tectonism and sedimentary processes, natural hazards, volcanology, geochemistry and petrology, and so on. There are four or five sets of talks going on in any one of these areas at any time. They are accommodated in about two dozen theatres or large rooms on the conference centre’s three floors. For the next week, each space will have a new presentation every 15 or 30 minutes. And that’s before the fruit of the tubes. In a huge marquee on a nearby parking lot - reached by a walkway that is doubtless much more sturdy than it feels - there is room for the display of over 1,900 posters, which change every day.
If I’m diligent, I guess I could do some justice to 30 presentations a day, more than half in the form of posters, though I won’t get all the subtleties. That represents about 1 per cent of what’s on offer. Unlike people with posters to display, I don’t have a single outstanding reason for being
An account by Oliver Morton
Geoscience on parade:What happened when more than 11,000 earth scientists gathered
in Nice last year
On the evening of Sunday 6th April the baggage reclaim at Nice airport is full of people with tubes a metre or so long slung over their shoulders. They bring their tubes in from the gates alone or with a friend; soon they recognise others of their ilk and congregate collegially before the arrival of checked-in bags spurs them to break off in taxi-sized cliques and head off into the night.The tube-bearers are coming to what is probably the largest meeting of Earth scientists ever to take place in Europe - a joint meeting of the European Union of Geosciences, the European Geophysical Society and the American Geophysical Union. The posters wrapped up in their tubes carry the results and hypotheses that they will be presenting to their peers. When the occasional poster tube turns up on the baggage carousel, there’s a mild susurration of shock at the nonchalance of checking in a poster; lose your poster and you lose your presentation.
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here. I write about the Earth and planetary sciences; I’ve written a book about Mars and am planning a couple about the Earth, and part of the point of coming is to build up ideas and contacts for those projects. Shorter term, there are some subjects here I should be digging into for articles I am working on. But mainly I really enjoy a good scientific conference, and this one sounded so promising I wanted to sample it. It’s a kind of high-intensity face to face browsing.
One field I can browse with great pleasure is paleo-climatology, the study of the various and often peculiar climates that the Earth has managed to produce for itself over time. Among the most intriguing is the very warm climate of the Eocene period, about 50m years ago; fossils from the Eocene show that the world as a whole was warmer then than it is today, and that at high latitudes it was much, much warmer. The Thames valley was choked by mangrove swamps; forests reached pretty much to the poles themselves.
There’s good evidence that during the Eocene (and similar earlier periods) carbon dioxide levels were higher than they are today, and that they warmed the world. But if you bump up the carbon dioxide levels in computer models that reproduce today’s climate, you don’t produce what the fossils seem to show happened in the Eocene. You get a warmer world - but not a world so startlingly warm at high latitudes. You can’t get the poles hot enough.
Daniel Kirk-Davidoff, of the University of Maryland, offers a possible mechanism for warming those recalcitrant poles. In a warmer world, he argues, the flow of heat out of the tropics towards the poles - the meridional flow - will be reduced. As a result, the altitude of the tropopause - the boundary between the lower atmosphere and the stratosphere -will be lower, at the equator, than it is today. More water vapour will leak into the stratosphere, making it a lot damper. This moisture will flow north and south, and eventually form stratospheric clouds over the poles, trapping the heat so that the poles will warm up. (The details of which clouds warm the earth and which cool it are a week of talks on their own; but polar stratospheric clouds are definitely warmers.)
This mechanism provides a way for a world that is warmer overall to get a lot warmer at the poles, which is what is needed to make sense of some of those past greenhouse climates. Though Kirk-Davidoff doesn’t expound on this, it’s possible that when the amount of carbon dioxide reaches Eocene levels we will see such an effect starting to amplify global warming.
Back in the press room - an oddly shaped space below the banked seating of the Athena lecture theatre on the first floor - I try to explain the virtues of Kirk-Davidoff’s argument to my friend Gabrielle Walker, a former editor at New Scientist and the author of Snowball Earth, a wonderful book about a very different type of extreme climate from the past. Gabrielle isn’t impressed, partly because I can’t reproduce some of the subtleties of the argument well enough. The fact that I can’t pronounce the word “meridional” consistently doesn’t help. Moreover, Gabrielle has seen polar stratospheric clouds in Finland and found them incredibly beautiful, like a sky “full of peacock feathers.” She is unwilling to see a downside to such beauty.
Tuesday morning The day is packed with talks on methane - there’s even a
press conference on it. Press conferences, like the well-hidden press room, are the result of the American Geophysical Union’s
presence. The AGU, like most US scientific organisations, takes press communications more seriously than its European counterparts.
The methane press conference, chaired by the unflappable AGU press officer, Harvey Leifert, covers several lines of research into the vast deposits of clathrate - a sort of methane-rich ice - that have been found under the sediments of various seas and oceans. The methane is produced by bacteria in the deepest sediments. Some people - notably James Kennett of the University of California, Santa Barbara - think that sudden releases of methane from these clathrate stores have huge effects on the climate (methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide). Kennett thinks that methane in the air bubbles trapped in ice laid down at the ends of various ice ages is evidence of a “methane trigger,” and that a sudden spike of methane-induced warming set off a longer term, carbon dioxide-based warming. Others think the methane spikes at he ends of ice ages are a response to the initial warming, not its cause. After an hour of press conference and another hour of milling around with the speakers, it’s not clear if any side in the debate has the upper hand. Carbon 14 dating of the methane in the ice would do the trick - but it is difficult to measure, and the people trying it ay not have definitive results for some time.
Later, at one of the hundreds of posters on the topic, I come across a German clathrate cynic. German researchers have set the pace on methane research, but he tells me the field only has the prominence that it has because of interest from Germany’s press, and that claims about the amount of clathrate beneath today’s oceans are greatly overblown. He thinks it is an interesting issue, but secondary. He works on it anyway; it’s where the funding is.
Tuesday evening Peter Westbroek is honoured with the Vernadsky medal for
contributions to geobiology, the discipline which uses biology to understand the workings and history of the Earth. Peter, a retired professor from the University of Leiden, gives an idiosyncratic and endearing lecture about the way that, over the history of the Earth, the production of carbonate rocks has gone from being a purely chemical process to one driven almost entirely by biology. Afterwards a number of us head out to eat seafood in one of the colonnades that ring nearby Place Garibaldi. This is a hardcore seafood restaurant: no salads, no vegetables, no vertebrates. The service is a touch on the brusque side, and the temperature drops alarmingly when one of the gas heaters sputters and dies. The sediments of the Mediterranean may be packed with methane, but not this restaurant. Still, the conversation, wine and food make up or everything. Peter gets stuck in to a large plate of oysters, doubtless attracted by their carbonate shells. Next to me, Graham Budd, a palaeontologist with great expertise in arthropod anatomy, tries out his dissecting skills on a crab, with mixed results. He might have done better on a trilobite.
Wednesday morning I bump into a geophysicist I’ve known for several years.
For all that time he has been working on ways to transport seismometers to the surface of Mars, most recently as part of a French-led project called Netlander. Unfortunately, the spacecraft that was meant to take the four little Netlanders to
THE EGGS 21
Mars has recently been cancelled, sending the project into a spin. For a while it looked possible that Nasa might help out by providing room on a mission it has planned for 2009, but while one part of Nasa was studying that possibility, the part that was funding the American instruments on the landers pulled out. So my friend’s careful study of Marsquakes looks likely to be deferred for another decade. It’s hard not to think that the past few months have probably not been the most propitious time for French space scientists to look to Washington for help. Collateral damage?
Wednesday afternoon Graham Budd, neophyte eater of crabs, gives a terrific
account of the “Cambrian explosion” - the sudden burst of diversity seen in fossils 540m years ago. The arguments are clear and convincing, the delivery droll, the attacks on the various theories with which Budd disagrees sharp to near brutal. (Asked what he thinks of a theory that links the explosion to the genetic programmes by which arthropods develop, Budd replies “It’s utter nonsense.” When asked to expand on this his head rocks back in bewilderment. Is utter nonsense a difficult concept to grasp?)
Later on, Andy Ridgwell - a one-time eco-warrior with partially dreadlocked hair and just short of wild eyes - gives a talk on the role of the oceans around Antarctica in governing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the end of the most recent ice age. Like Budd’s, the talk takes the audience through a field overburdened with competing theories; again, there is clarity, wit and insight, although the delivery is a little less barbed. It strikes me that maybe Cambridge, where they were both ndergraduates, imbues its students with a rhetoric articularly well suited to the complex histories of the living Earth. That said, it is entirely possible that, while studying at Cambridge at roughly the same time, my idea of what a good talk on the biogeosciences should sound like became fixed on what I was exposed to. Budd’s style, in particular, reminds me of Simon Conway Morris, one of the palaeontologist heroes of Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life, and by far the most entertaining lecturer on the year-long introductory geology course I took at Cambridge. Both explanations probably work: they’re really good at it and I still carry prejudices fixed as an undergraduate.There is a set of sessions tomorrow on why the Himalayas are so tall and on what their shooting up may have meant for the climate; the fact that a lot of the work is by the Cambridge professor whose lectures I remember least fondly is the shameful reasons I won’t be going.
Knackered, I head off to a little pizzeria by the old port, thinking to dine with just the Herald Tribune. The patron thinks differently, and I share a table and a conversation with a Swiss petrologist. As time goes by I realise that, even by the standards of the Swiss, he speaks truly excellent English. Not many non-native speakers will use the word “hullabaloo” in just the right way; still fewer will do so without a certain relish of accomplishment. It turns out, though, that English is not his second language but his fifth, from a total of nine or ten (two of them, admittedly - classical Greek and Latin - are written, not spoken). I learn this only by digging; he is entirely unboastful about it, although aware it’s unusual. As someone who finds even rudimentary language-learning hard, I am normally somewhat envious of polyglots. But achievement this prodigious is heartening; if humans can do something as wonderful as that, I’m all for them.
Thursday morning I’m not meant to be concentrating too much on Mars at
this conference but sometimes it is hard to resist. Jim Head, a planetary geologist from Brown University, is giving a number of presentations on the iciness of Mars. On Earth, most of the ice we see has its origins in liquid water - cloud droplets freeze to form snowflakes that fall to form ice caps and glaciers - and ends up as water again when it melts. Earthlings have thus come to think that because the surface of Mars shows relatively few signs of liquid water, there can’t be much ice moving across it, even though there is clearly ice at the poles. New images, though, are convincing Head and others that there is ice all over the place: ice that falls as snow, sits as glaciers and turns back into water vapour, hardly ever messing up the dust below by melting into a liquid.
Head has a poster showing some superb evidence for this. Pictures of the flanks of a crater in Mars’s southern highlands show a set of what seem to be smoothly flowing lobes of rock which are more or less impossible to see as anything but the remains of dirt-covered glaciers.
Head, recently returned from a field trip to the dry valleys of Antarctica that taught him a lot about what earthly glaciers can look like in arid situations, is clearly very pleased with them. A Norwegian glaciologist ambles by, looks at the pictures, looks away, looks again. “Are these really on Mars?” he asks with a tone of what I take to be subdued Scandinavian wonder. “They are,” replies Head. And the two of them grin at each other, delighted by the universe in general and planets in particular.
Thursday lunchtime Every day brings more talks about links between sun and
climate. The amount of energy given off by the sun varies over a number of timescales - most famously the 11-year solar cycle - but not by very much, and so most specialists tend to see solar variability as only a minor factor in the variability of the climate. However, a growing body of data and hypotheses argue that the sun may have a greater role to play. One possibility is that ultraviolet radiation is important. Although the overall brightness of the sun varies only a little, the amount of UV it generates changes a lot more, and could affect the stratosphere, which could in turn affect the lower atmosphere. Another possibility hinges on the solar wind - the constant stream of charged particles that pours off the sun. The magnetic fields carried by this wind help to shelter the Earth from cosmic radiation; at times of low wind more radiation gets through, creating more electrically charged ions in the lower atmosphere. These ions may then catalyse the formation of water droplets and clouds. The sort of clouds formed, according to this theory, are those which reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the surface below.
These are provocative possibilities, and from chatting to people looking at posters on the subject I get the impression that people interested in the history of the climate are taking them more seriously than they did a few years ago. But the suggested mechanisms for linking changes in the climate to the sun are not yet widely accepted, for a number of reasons. One is that the evidence is still basically circumstantial. Another is that most of the people championing such a link do so from outside the mainstream of climate science; they come at it from
THE EGGS 22
a physics background. Outsiders who think they know better are rarely welcomed in any discipline. Another issue is that on more than one occasion these sun-Earth connections have been championed by people, institutions and corporations with a history of trying to downplay the importance of the vast build-up in atmospheric carbon dioxide now underway. A bigger role for the sun is a way to argue that this carbon dioxide doesn’t matter much. From there it’s a short, often easily taken step to saying that the climate science establishment is just feathering their own nests with grant money. This is not fair, and doesn’t help the debate.
Listening to the sun-Earth evidence, though, I can’t help feeling that even if it is true that the sun is a bigger player in climate change than previously thought, it’s hardly the reassuring message the carbon lobby seems to think it is. It’s just another thing to worry about. The idea that sun-induced climate change over the course of this century will offset any greenhouse-induced climate change seems absurdly optimistic. Although their net effects on global average temperature might be of the same sort of magnitude, the patterns of climate change they would be expected to produce will not be equal and opposite. If UV is dominant, solar cooling will be felt more at low latitudes; if clouds play a role, cloudy places will cool more; greenhouse warming, on the other hand, tends to affect the high latitudes. It also works at night as well as by day, while solar effects would probably be daytime only. Rather than expecting such different patterns of change to cancel each other out, you might more plausibly expect that, by pushing the climate system in opposite directions, the two different influences will set it ringing like a bell, or bouncing like a jack-in-the-box.
Thursday afternoon The threat of global climate change has not only brought
about a proliferation of new hypotheses, it has also led to a salutary interest in monitoring the Earth and finding out how its atmosphere and oceans really work. A lot of this interest is expressed through the building of satellites - there must be dozens of different satellite missions already producing data, about to launch, or still at the planning stage. On Thursday afternoon I went to a presentation about one of these missions, a joint Japanese-European satellite designed to find out how clouds work. I am ashamed to say that I fell asleep during some of the details (many of us noticed that the seats in the vast Apollon hall were by far the comfiest in the conference centre) but the gist seemed excellent.
The presenters had a well thought through plan to use a number of different instruments, including radar and lasers, to measure the particles that make up specific clouds and find out whether they were ice or water, see how they were influenced by dust, smoke and other aerosols and work out how much energy they reflect back into space. They had dramatic graphics - the illustrator, the speaker said, seemed to have developed his idea of what a laser looked like by watching James Bond films. And they had a good acronym: EarthCARE, standing for Earth, Clouds, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer. Sounds like a winner; in ten years it could be the talk of the conference. Or at least the cloud sessions.
Friday morning By now I’m acutely aware of how much I’ve missed. I
have not heard a single volcanologist. I failed to get to the meeting on the digital divide in the earth sciences. (The lack of third world participation here reminds me of a meeting of scientists studying Gondwanaland, the ancient supercontinent made up of India, Africa and nearly all of the rest of the land south of the equator, which took place in South Africa in the late 1990s. Nelson Mandela addressed the conference, and while welcoming the almost exclusively northern delegates expressed the hope that a few more scientists native to Gondwana might soon swell their ranks. Not much evidence of it here.)I have spurned the geodynamics and hydrological sciences talks almost completely, not to mention the geodesy panels, the geophysical instrumentation sessions, the natural hazards and the tectonism and sedimentary processes. Hundreds of pages of the vast programme book I’ve been carrying around are unsullied. At the same time, I feel entirely full of new information. Random example: John Priscu of Montana State University, if I have understood him correctly, thinks there is as much biomass inside the Antarctic ice cap as in he world’s freshwater lakes.
There is one man I have been meaning to track down all week: a Dutch palaeontologist and climate specialist called Henk, whose work may be relevant to a Chicxulub-related story I’m working on. I decide not to seek him out actively, but to trust to fate. If I meet him, I tell myself, it will be an omen of completeness. I will have done my duty. Leaving the press room I spot Dick Kerr, the veteran geosciences correspondent for Science magazine, and a man who may know more about the breadth of what is going on here than anyone else. He is looking at a website that appears to be about rain, and my guilt for ignoring hydrology wells up. But he only wants to know whether the pitch on which he will be playing soccer back in DC tomorrow will be waterlogged.
Friday afternoon There’s a session on the climatic history of Antarctica. One
of the outstanding presentations is by Rob DeConto. His topic is the sudden growth of the first major Antarctic ice sheets, about 30m years ago. A lot of previous work has been devoted to the idea that the key to the ice sheets was the drift away from Antarctica of all the other continents. As a complete hoop of ocean opened up around Antarctica, encircling ocean currents isolated it from the rest of the climate, allowing it to cool and ice sheets to become established. This idea was developed by James Kennett, the man now championing methane triggers for the ends of ice ages. Both these ideas represent exactly what the planetary sciences need - the tying together of a number of different phenomena into a story that can then be tested. The result of the tests matters much less than the fact there was something testable in the first place.
DeConto and his colleague Dave Pollard have now tested the ocean-current isolation idea and aren’t convinced. Their models suggest that the opening up of the southern oceans may have helped but it was carbon dioxide that drove the show. A long gradual drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could have caused the sudden glaciation through a threshold effect; once it was cold enough for the ice sheets to start growing, they grew at a terrific lick. A smooth change in carbon dioxide with dramatically spiky, world-changing results - that’s something to think about. When I go over to ask DeConto a few questions afterwards he is deep in conversation with a broad-shouldered Dutchman wearing a T-shirt from Mauna Kea that is identical
THE EGGS 23
to one that my brother once gave me. A surreptitious glance at the name badge on his denim jacket - surreptitious glances at name badges are a key part of the journalist’s trade at this sort of thing - brings a surge of fulfilment. I have found Henk.
Friday evening The last talk of the conference takes me back to the
Apollon theatre, in all its luxurious vastness. Uriel Frisch, a mathematician based here in Nice, has been honoured with the EGS’s Lewis Fry Richardson medal for work on nonlinear processes in geophysics. To mark the award, he is giving a lecture titled “Back to the Primordial Universe by a Monge-Amp?re-Kantotovich Mass Transportation Method.” Maybe it is this striking but not necessarily alluring title, maybe it’s the fact that the lecture is taking place at eight in the evening on Friday after a gruelling week, maybe it’s the confusion about which room it should be in - whatever the reason, the most notable feature of the talk is that the theatre is basically empty.
Over the week I’ve made various attempts to estimate the size of the Apollon, and I’ve settled on 2,000 seats in the stalls and first balcony, another 1,000 higher up. Twenty of these seats are occupied. Having thought all week I was seeing about 1 per cent of the conference, I can now see what 1 per cent really looks like. It looks like nothing at all.
Stomping around the sound desk before the start, Frisch appears a little pissed off, and who can blame him? Giving a man a high honour and then setting him up for humiliation through lack of audience is a mean trick. But Frisch - author, I’m told by one of the other 19 audience members, of a “really good” book about turbulence - is clearly a trooper. Once on stage he gives an excellent and erudite talk, the daunting differential equations leavened with entertaining disquisitions on how they came to be misnamed and misunderstood. The heart of the talk is an equation developed by the French mathematician and engineer Gaspard Monge in the 18th century to find the most efficient way of moving earth taken out of holes on to ramparts. Frisch has seen a way to apply a form of this equation to new maps of the distribution of galaxies in the known universe, and thus to work out where they all came from.
At the end of this tour de force he asks the intergalactic void stretching out in front of him for questions. To the great relief of the other 19 of us someone manages to think of one. Frisch answers it, and honour is satisfied. Our conference is over. We wander out into the night past vast piles of discarded posters not deemed worth taking back to the universities they came from.
Saturday I take a train up into the mountains to hike and clear my
head. I end up walking about six miles along the side of a valley overlooking the little town of Annot. The last two miles or so are something of a trudge owing to the snow on the paths. From the valley floor the snow looked sparse, but that, I realise, was because I was seeing it through the canopy of pines. Earlier in the week, I remember, I talked to a climate modeller about just this issue - the way that pine forests make the planet darker and thus warmer, even when there is snow on the ground beneath their needles. Obviously, I need to work on integrating my theoretical knowledge with my everyday
life. The walk is hard work; the view back over the maritime Alps is magnificent. As I take it in, I realise that every passing detail has been thought hard about by someone I brushed past over the past week. How the cliffs of sandstone in the opposite wall of the valley were formed on the bottom of a long lost sea; how cycles in the ancient climate left their rhythms in those sediments, interleaving thin laminations and great monolithic bands; how deep the sandstones must have been buried, and then how high they were lifted when the collision of two tectonic plates drove them up into the skies; how ice-age erosion carved the valley through them; how floods - the most recent just a few years ago - continue to whittle away at them; how their sediments whiten the streams in spate below on their way to the Mediterranean; how the roots of the pines and oaks and chestnuts eat into the rock for their nutrients, producing new soil; how the timing of the first spring flowers, just coming into bloom at the snowline, tells us of the changes in the climate; how the forest canopies mist the sky with volatile chemicals, creating a blue haze in the valleys beyond; how the clouds that form over the peaks affect the world below.
Thousands of people who live to try to understand these wonders are now fanning out from Nice and around the world. Even thousands are not that many; you could lose ten thousand people in this one valley. Walking back down from the pass, I imagine seeing those conference posters again, unpacked from their tubes, one for every metre of the path, and in front of them a conga line of academics in a vast chain of conversation about this landscape and other landscapes; about the processes that join them and the histories that distinguish them; about the understanding that flows from them.
For all that we try, humankind still does not really grasp the Earth. We damage it out of ignorance. We do not yet understand all its wonders, even less the ways that they fit together. But we try to understand, and that adds a crucial last wonder to the list.
Oliver Morton is a freelance writer and editor who concentrates on scientific knowledge, technological change and their implications. He’s a contributing editor at Wired, and his writing has also appeared in Nature, Science, The New Yorker, National Geographic, The New York Times, Discover, New Scientist, The American Scholar and a number of other newspapers and magazines. His first book, Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World was published in 2002 by Picador (US) and Fourth Estate (UK), and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, not to mention the British Science Fiction Award for best related book. He is currently working on a book about what photosynthesis means to people, plants and planets. He wrote this article imediatelly after last year’s EGS-EUG-AGU Joint Assembly in Nice. It appeared in Prospect Magazine,
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/Oliver Morton
The Apse142A Greenwich High Road
London SE10 8NNTel: 44 20 8293 7171
[email protected]@wiredmag.com
This article is copyright of Oliver Morton.
THE EGGS 24
The Group produced a 106-page document entitled “Final Report of the IUGG Working Group Geosciences: The Future”, available online at www.iugg.org/geosciences.html.
The report is structured in 12 chapters, including the Introduction and the Conclusions. The remaining 10 chapters are the reports of the various disciplines, namely:
--International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior (IASPEI)
--International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior (IAVCEI)
--International Association of the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO)
--International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS)
--International Association of Geodesy (IAG)--International Association of Meteorological and
Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS)--International Association of Geomagnetism and
Aeronomy (IAGA)--Interdisciplinary Research--Societal ImpactThe chapters are structured on short-term priorities
and long-term goals, recommendations, opportunities and conlusions.
Below the last chapter of the report, Conclusions, from E. E. Brodsky, IAVCEI Chair:
“Through the discussions of this report, a few broad themes have emerged. We see prediction as a major long-range goal of all fields, whether it be prediction of earthquakes, eruptions or space weather. In some fields, like meterology, oceanography and hydrology, scientists should aim to not only predict events, but ultimately, to control them.
In the more immediate future, we recommend the following general priorities for geoscientists and the associations that represent them.
1. Interdisciplinary studies are clearly crucial to making progress in all of the fields in this report. The Earth and its environs are complex systems where the physics does not partition itself into neat compartments. The need for true crossing of boundaries is so great that we recommend that IUGG rethink the boundaries between associations. Most of the current member associations of IUGG have their origins in the first half of the twentieth century when the fields of geoscience were radically different than today. It no longer makes sense to segregate freshwater from salt water scientists or those that measure the Earth’s deformation via satellite from those that use the same satellites to measure ionospheric perturbations. There are also major new disciplines that have emerged that
The Future of Geosciences New Report on the future of geosciences from
the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics(IUGG)
In summer 2001, the Executive Committee of IUGG (Bureau, Presidents and Secretaries General of the seven Associations) approved a proposal put forward by Uri Shamir, IUGG Vice President, “to set up a Working Group of young geo-scientists, one from each of the seven associations, under the title “Geosciences: The Future” (WG-GTF), to examine the state of the geosciences and identify research challenges, emphasizing inter-disciplinary research, integration of scientists from around the world, in particular in less developed nations, and the role that IUGG should play in advancing the geosciences into the future.”
THE EGGS 25
are currently unrepresented in the structure of IUGG. Where do physicists who study surface processes fit in or chemical physicists who explain the fractionation of isotopes? What about planetary scientists?
Even the distinction between geophysicists as opposed to geochemists or geologists has become blurred in practice. In order to become an effective society for modern scientists, IUGG must grapple with the new shape of the fields.
2. All disciplines represented here found significant motivation in the societal benefits of their science. We also see that a healthy future of the field requires emphasis on basic science. Not every project needs to be tied to a specific benefit for society. The short-range goals articulated in each section are primarily scientific questions rather than engineering ones. This identification of extensive basic scientific needs supports the assertion in the introduction that governments, funding agencies and professional societies must support basic science financially and intellectually at a level comparable to applied science.
3. At the same time as basic science is being pursued, geoscientists need to continue to put their short-term results to use. Knowledge transfer can be successfully accomplished by utilizing mass media outlets as well as more traditional advisories to policymakers. The web and television are likely the best ways to reach the youth audience, a key demographic in ensuring the future of the field. Regular, continued press communications from IUGG could be a useful tool for sustained results.
4. Geoscience is intrinsically a global science. The internet and expansion of digital data has recently enhanced our ability to collect and distribute data and model results across all fields and nations. Such data distribution is enhancing interdisciplinary collaborations by improving individual investigators ability to combine datasets.
The new openness could be a boon to scientists in developing countries who can now, in principle, enjoy equal
access to state-of-the-art datasets and model results. In order to make the promises of the digital age a reality, existing data centers must be expanded and new ones begun for currently unrepresented disciplines. In particular, this report cites the need for volcanic, hydrological, and space physics data and modeling centers. These centers must provide free, unrestricted access to all users.
5. Massive datasets and numerical models have both become possible in recent years. One of the most significant
challenges facing all areas of geoscience is to combine the new data with state of the art models to better understand the complex systems in nature. Both model validation and incorporating the data in the model areimportant. One methodology that is gaining momentum in all fields is data assimilation, i.e., using a weighted combination of observations and theoretical constraints to produce predictions of future behavior. Such combinations will be a key component of progress in natural sciences in the near future.
6. The coupling between spheres of geoscience is often lost at the interface between sciences. Regional models could be a useful tool for both uncovering these couplings and answering specific scientific problems. Regional models are defined by a specific geographic area rather than a methodology. Studies could focus on a locale such as the East Pacific rise or the Antarctic sky. Combined expertise from all the relevant disciplines would help to quantify the observed processes and, more importantly, elucidate which interactions between spheres are quantitatively important.
7. High-resolution Earth system studies pose challenges for both data collection and modeling. Dense observations need to be taken to resolve the physics of such highly variable processes, such as turbulence and other subgridscale phenomena. Once these dense measurements are collected, the scale dependence of parameters must be investigated. In addition, incorporating these findings into global models is challenging in every field. For example, hydrologists have discovered that fundamental parameters, like permeability, depend significantly on the scale of observation. Similar discoveries probably await investigators in other fields. New models must incorporate this inherent feature of natural systems.
8. All of the associations noticed the importance of studies on other planets as a method of testing and expanding their current understanding. As discussed in the Interdisciplinary Chapter, IUGG should consider formalizing its activity in this important frontier by forming an inter-association body or even a new association.
The working group hopes that both the general and subject specific recommendations of this report may provide a useful
framework for much exciting science to come. We look forward to being part of the future of geoscience.”
Source: IUGG, from www.iugg.org/geosciences.html
The Eggs now offers FREE posting and browsing of job positions
You can now post in this Newsletter, free of charge, available openings in your Institution or group athttp://www.the-eggs.org/submit/jobs.php
Available jobs can be viewed and searched athttp://www.the-eggs.org/jobs.php
On-line job positions are updated every week.
THE EGGS 27
NSF funds Meeting of Young Researchers in the Earth Sciences
The NSF grant will allow the establishment of a biennial conference series, the “Meeting of Young Researchers in the Earth Sciences (MYRES)”, that will gather junior scientists in geochemistry, geodynamics, mineral physics, seismology, and other related Solid Earth fields.
The primary aim of MYRES (www.myres.org) is to further science by accelerating the growth of an interdisciplinary, international, open, and unbiased community of colleagues that can interact regularly to informally exchange ideas, data, and tools, and to formulate new collaborative research projects. The focus of each MYRES meeting will be the overview and discussion of a major outstanding problem from the Solid Earth Sciences. The NSF award will support the first MYRES meeting, to take place from August 12 to August 15, 2004, in La Jolla CA on the following subject: “Heat, Helium, Hotspots, and Whole Mantle Convection” (see meetings at this issue).
It is expected that the primary broader impact of this activity will be to bring together early-career specialists that can educate each other about the specific issues each discipline can address, and thus, allow a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of the constraints different disciplines can provide to a specific problem. MYRES also
plans to implement new ways to educate across disciplinary boundaries and to evaluate these innovative procedures to ensure the success of the educational aspect of these meetings. The long-range goal of the larger MYRES initiative, which also entails a wide range of planned online resources, is to establish a framework for unhindered, international scientific cooperation. Such community-building efforts are expected not only to have a substantial educational impact among this new generation of scientists but also help improve the overall effectiveness of research in the Earth Sciences. You can contribute to this community effort and participate in MYRES-I by signing up at www.myres.org/myres1/ (More info about the MYRES-I meeting can be found at this issue at the events section).
Dr. Thorsten BeckerIGPP-0225, Scripps Inst. of Oceanography
University of California, San DiegoLa Jolla CA 92093-0225, USA
NSF has recently approved funding for the first installment of a novel workshop series, the “Meeting of Young Researchers in the Earth Sciences” or MYRES.
MYRES-I meeting will take place in La Jolla CA, 12.08.-15.08.2004.
THE EGGS 28
Highly recommended
Aerosol Measurement: Principles, Techniques, and Applications
Paul A.Baron and Klaus Willeke (eds.) Published by: Wiley-Interscience, New York, Chichester, Weinheim, Brisbane, Singapore, TorontoISBN: 0471356360 YEAR : 2001 EDITION : 2nd #PAGES : 1160 PRICE : 195.30 €
One could comment that this is yet another book on aerosol and how to measure it (them?). The editors have a head start over other books on the same topic, since the first edition was also excellent.
As with a lot of edited books, one realises that they are directed towards experts. There is nothing wrong with this. Everybody’s new graduate students, need a start with edited books on their specific subject of study. Each chapter is concise with a large number of references, albeit not so new (a usual problem with edited books). The editors try to impress to the beginners that aerosol is not ‘ONE’ compound or ‘ONE’ pollutant hence the comprehensiveness of the coverage in 37 chapters, starting from ‘basic principles’ to ‘techniques’ and ‘applications’. It is extremely useful for graduate students and for academics to have such a text in our selves, because of the large and diverse information it contains.
The chapters are written by a large number of world leaders in this subject and the quality is obvious. The book describes virtually every important aerosol measurement technique employed currently in research and monitoringapplications. This includes filter collection, impaction, optical microscopy, and methods developed more recently such as time-of-flight analyzers, electrodynamic particle levitation, and in situ sensing. Although all topics expect the TOF –MS were covered on some level in the first edition, most chapters include new information developed in the eight years between editions. Chapters discussing chemical analyses for atmospheric aerosols, analytical microscopy, dynamic mass and surface area measurements, and electrical techniques have received extensive revisions. Applications in medical rooms, indoor environments, for biological and chemical aerosol, although short are also informative to
non experts. I would highly recommend this
book to anyone that needs to start up research on this field, or is a legislator or simply wants this type of information at hand often. I am the happy owner of two copies of it.
Prof. Dr. S. RapsomanikisHead of Department and Director of the Laboratory of Atmospheric
Pollution and Pollution Control Engineering of Atmospheric
PollutantsDepartment of Environmental
EngineeringDemocritus University of Thrace
(DUTH)Xanthi, GREECE
THE EGGS 29
BOOK PRESENTATION
Bilion-year earth history of Australia and neighbours in Gondwanaland
J. J. Veevers (ed.) Published by: GEMOC PressDepartment of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109 AustraliaISBN: 1-876315-04-0 YEAR : 2004 EDITION : 3rd #PAGES : 400 PRICE : 50.00 €
Both 400-page Veevers (ed., 2000) Billion-year earth history of Australia and neighbours in Gondwanaland (BYEHA) and 80-colour page Veevers (2001) ATLAS of BYEHA are now in their 3rd printing, occasioned by the first two printings being sold out.
Australia and its neighbours occupy a third of the earth’s continental lithosphere, and their billion-year history encompasses 10% of earth time and space. In the past 15 years, the geology of Australia and neighbours has developed by the application of remote sensing at global scale, aeromagnetic mapping, satellite-altimetry (GEOSAT) of the oceans, geodynamic mapping by the Global Positioning System (GPS) - and at micron scale by the U-Pb dating of single zircon grains by the Sensitive High Resolution Ion Micro-Probe (SHRIMP). In probing beyond the Phanerozoic into the Neoproterozoic, we have established a global framework of time-correlation by the stable isotopes of carbon and the ratio of 87Sr/
86Sr, calibrated by U/Pb ages of zircon. Foldbelt deformation has been dated by 40Ar/39Ar and uplift/denudation by apatite fission-track analysis. Both SHRIMP U/Pb in zircon and AFTA methods were perfected on Australian rocks. Furthermore, the SHRIMP dating of single grains of zircon provides a clear indication of the provenance of Australian and New Zealand sediment in the 600-500 Ma Beardmore-Ross source areas of Antarctica as well as dating bedrock elsewhere. Connections in Gondwanaland from Australia through Antarctica-India to Africa along the 600-500 Ma Prydz-Leeuwin Belt are confirmed by zircon ages. The 580 Ma collision of East and West Gondwanaland, the mid-Carboniferous Pangean collision in Europe, and the mid-Cretaceous swerve of the Pacific plate shaped modern Australia. Except its recent scalping in New Guinea and activity along its Phanerozoic plate margins, Australia has been shaped by events that originated from afar.
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With these perspectives, we recount the billion-year history of Australia and neighbours in three parts:
1. PRESENT & PAST GLOBAL SETTINGS: Australia in Pangea & Gondwanaland; paleomagnetism & paleolatitude; seafloor spreading around Australia; morphotectonics of the margins; Australian-Antarctic Depression; Quaternary Australia.
2. ANALYSIS OF AUSTRALIA: present tectonic state; crust & lithosphere from seismic observations; lithospheric structure from mantle xenoliths; Indian & Pacific MORB-type mantle beneath Australia; heat flow; vertical motions of the platform since the Jurassic; mid-Cretaceous & mid-Eocene events and coeval swerves of the Pacific; Antarctic provenances saturate Paleozoic-Mesozoic East Gondwanaland with 0.6-0.5 Ga zircons; Neoproterozoic platform; Tasman Fold Belt System; Permian-Triassic basins and fold belts along Eastern Australia.
3. REGIONAL SYNTHESIS: Neoproterozoic-Paleozoic Australia & neighbours in Gondwanaland; impact on Australia and Antarctica of the collisional merging of Gondwanaland & Laurussia in Pangea; basins and foldbelts along the Panthalassan margin of Gondwanaland; Australia’s neighbours in Gondwanaland along the Tethyan margin; tectonics of Pangea(s), Gondwanaland, & Laurussia; synopsis. Further geographic cover is provided by analogues in Asia and Africa, and comparison with Laurentia. The frame for Australia’s earth history is no less than the entire globe.
Contributions are by P. Morgan, S.Y. O’Reilly, E. Scheibner, J.J. Veevers & M.R. Walter, GEMOC, Macquarie University, Sydney; D.A. Clark & P.W.
Schmidt, CSIRO Division of Exploration & Mining, N Ryde; S. Clark, C. Gaina & R.D. Muller, University of Sydney; B.L.N. Kennett Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU, Canberra; and M.A.J. Williams,University of Adelaide.
We published BYEHA ourselves in an attempt to provide Australian geologists with a research monograph at cost without the enormous overheads of multinational publishers compounded by the ruinous exchange rate. The price is at least 5 times cheaper than books published overseas. Fellow geologists (and departmental libraries) have supported this independent publishing by buying the book so that with the initial outlays recouped, we can now offer the books at further discounts of 10 to 20%. The new price for BYEHA and ATLAS is €50 or $AUS 80.
Extracts from reviews follow: John Crowell in Geotimes: “Huge
amounts of data are presented in Veevers’ trademark ‘time-space diagrams’ and skilfully designed maps and diagrams. The soft-cover book is beautifully produced and printed on high-quality paper, and is a bargain.”
Tony Crawford in Episodes: “The publishers, the contributors, and especially John Veevers, all deserve immense credit for this remarkable volume, which for me will be the single most useful book on Australian post-1 Ga geological evolution of eastern Gondwanaland - an exceptional achievement.”
Bill Dickinson in GSA Today: “There is no more informative summary of Australian tectonic history in a regional
and global context, something in the volume for almost everyone, and the price is right.”
Nick Mortimer in Geological Society of New Zealand Newsletter: “I was thoroughly engrossed by the plethora of thematic paleogeographic maps and event stratigraphy diagrams: terrifyingly impressive in their depth, breadth and number.”
Dick Selley in The Geoscientist (Geological Society of London): “Wow! To paraphrase a cliche, this book tells you everything about Gondwanaland that you could possibly need to know .... The book has a sensible large [A4] page size which enables the effective display of large maps and cross-sections. Billion-year Earth History is an essential reference work for all geologists interested in the large-scale crustal evolution of the Earth in general, and for antipodean geologists in particular.”
Heli Wopfner in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft (from the original German): “Billion-year earth history of Australia is a survey of global geological phenomena of the past billion years. It is an enormous work of scholarship .... With its 24 pages of references the book is an outstanding source of information.”
For further details, including order forms and prices elsewhere, visit:
http://www.es.mq.edu.au/GEMOC/BYEHA/page1.htm
John [email protected]
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Realtime live streaming aurora cam
http://www.aurorawebcam.com/
There is a site that offers live aurora broadcast on the web from Aurora Mountain, Creek Lodge in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Upon reading the article “Aurora - The magnificent northern lights” co-written by Ioannis Daglis and Syun-Ichi Akasofu on the splendors of aurora (this issue) and also contributing one of my pictures to be used in the article, I thought this groundbreaking website on the aurora would be of interest to the European Geophysical Union and other academic communities that research and teach about the aurora borealis.
On this website is the first and only realtime live streaming auroracam. It truly is a groundbreaking and remarkable effort, that gives many people worldwide a chance to view the aurora.
It is run by Troy Birdsall outside of Fairbanks, Alaska and Stachu Strzyzewski in Poland. During webcam broadcasts, the aurora can be viewed in realtime, when the aurora is present.
Carolyn Szepanski1005 Reese St
Whiting, Indiana [email protected]
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4th International Summer School of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
(ISSAOS 2004) - (Course) 20/09/2004 - 24/09/2004 - University of L’Aquila, Italy
The School will focus on observing systems for atmospheric composition.
A list of the main topics is provided below:The need for observing systems of atmospheric
compositiona) Satellites - TOMS retrievals of tropospheric ozone / composition - GOME / SCIAMACHY retrievals of tropospheric
composition - AURA retrievals of tropospheric composition - Satellites flying in formation: The A train - Future geostationary measurements b) Intensive field campaigns (chemistry, microphyics,
and transport process studies) - Aircraft campaigns building a comprehensive
measurement set - Intensive field campaigns to validate satellite
measurements - Ground-based field campaigns - Environmental chamber studies - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: current and future uses - Integration of networks, satellites, intensive field
campaigns c) Ground-based monitoring networks - Ozone monitoring networks - Lidar networks
The concept of a sensor web- Autonomous systems for data collection and data fusion - Computational requirements of the sensor web - Data assimilation - Inverse modeling techniques using sensor web data
Applications are invited from advanced graduate students (PhD), postdocs, and professionals.
Organizer:For all matters related to the School, please contact [email protected]@aquila.infn.it or send a message to fax no. 39-0862-433089
The Ocean in a High CO2 World: An International Science Symposium -
(Meeting) 10/05/2004 - 12/05/2004 - Paris, France
The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) are convening an open symposium on The Ocean in a High-CO2 World on 10-12 May 2004 in Paris, France. The symposium will address the biological and biogeochemical consequences of increasing
atmospheric and oceanic CO2 levels, and possible strategies for mitigating such increases. The symposium will include plenary presentations, discussion sessions on research priorities, and a poster session.
Papers from the symposium will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans and research priorities will be published separately for the benefit of ocean scientists and research program managers worldwide.
The Program for the Symposium will feature: --Overviews of atmospheric CO2 projections and climate
drivers of the ocean --Effects of CO2 enrichment on ocean chemistry --Overviews of proposed sequestration strategies for the
ocean --Short and long-term effects of CO2 enrichment on
organisms and ecosystems --Effects and effectiveness of carbon sequestration
techniques --Summaries of the implications of the high-CO2 world for
ocean chemistry and biology and how the research community could respond
--Two open discussion sessions to identify research and observation priorities and approaches
Contributions to the Symposium are solicited on topics that include, but are not limited to:
--Effects of anthropogenic CO2 increase on ocean chemistry
--Effects of anthropogenic CO2 increase on ocean biology --Effects of purposeful CO2 enrichment on ocean chemistry
--Effects of purposeful CO2 enrichment on ocean biology --Mitigation techniques: methods, efficiencies, unknowns --Observational field programs --Modelling projects --Organizations, programs, or scientific activities related to
scientific or technical aspects of ocean carbon science
All contributed papers to the symposium will be presented as posters.
Organizer:The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR)
and The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)
h t t p : / / i o c . u n e s c o . o r g / i o c w e b / c o 2 p a n e l /HighOceanCO2.htm
35th COSPAR Scientific Assembly and
Associated Events - (Meeting) 18/07/2004 - 25/07/2004 - Paris, France
Approximately 90 meetings covering the fields of COSPAR Scientific Commissions (SC)and Panels:
- SC A: The Earth’s Surface, Meteorology and Climate - SC B: The Earth-Moon System, Planets, and Small
Bodies of the Solar System - SC C: The Upper Atmospheres of the Earth and Planets
including Reference Atmospheres - SC D: Space Plasmas in the Solar System, Including
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Planetary Magnetospheres - SC E: Research in Astrophysics rom Space - SC F: Life Sciences as Related to Space - SC G: Materials Sciences in Space - SC H: Fundamental Physics in Space - Panel on Satellite Dynamics (PSD) - Panel on Scientific Ballooning (PSB) - Panel on Potentially Environmentally Detrimental
Activities in Space (PEDAS) - Panel on Standard Radiation Belts (PSRB) - Panel on Space Weather (PSW) - Panel on Planetary
Protection (PPP) - Panels on Space Research in Developing Countries
(PSRDC) and Capacity Building (PCB) - The Public Understanding of Space Science- Space
Science Education and Outreach
See Assembly home page for complete list of scientific events. Papers will be published in Advances in Space Research.
Scientific Program Chair: Dr. M.-L. Chanin, CNRS, Service d’Aeronomie, Verrieres-le-Buisson, France
Local Organizing Committee Chair: Prof. J. Audouze, Paris, France
Contact: COSPAR Secretariat, 51 bd de Montmorency, 75016 Paris, France Tel: +33 1 45 25 06 79 Fax: +33 1 40 50 98 27 [email protected] Organizer:The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR)http://www.copernicus.org/COSPAR/COSPAR.html
Challenges in the Climate Sciences
(Meeting) 23/05/2004 - 28/05/2004 -
Chateau de Blois, Blois, France
XVIth Rencontres de Blois Challenges in the Climate Sciences This is an announcement and call for contributions
for an international interdisciplinary conference on the terrestrial climate system. The purpose of the conference is to emphasize our current lack of understanding of certain key processes in the stability and evolution of the terrestrial climate, at all time scales, and to highlight whichavenues of research could improve that understanding. The conference will consist of plenary sessions and long poster sessions; for contributed papers, we have programmed two one hour long poster sessions per day, coupled with the coffee breaks. Parallel sessions for short oral contributions can be organised if there is sufficient demand for them.
The conference will take place in the Chateau de Blois (France), an ancient Royal residence in the Loire valley; all
sessions and meals (except breakfast) will be in the Chateau itself in order to maximise contacts between specialists of divers disciplines. Participants will be lodged in neighbouring hotels in the town of Blois.
Details (both scientific and administrative) are available on the conference web site, where you will find a scientific programme for the plenary sessions, including a list of the invited speakers who have accepted to give a talk. An on-line registration form is also available on this site; you should send it in as soon as possible, indicating in particular whether you would be interested in contributing to a parallel session, since this will enable the organisers to optimize the conference, and in particular to judge whether parallel sessions are in demand.
The deadline for registration and hotel reservation is March 22, 2004, but please do not wait until the last minute - conference secretaries have quite enough work already! Some limited financial assistance may be available; if you do require this, please fill in and send to the indicated address the financial support application form. The deadline for application is February 22, 2004.
If you require urgent information which is not on the web site, please contact Ludwik Celnikier at: [email protected]
Organizer: Rencontres de Blois Universite Paris Sudhttp://opserv.obspm.fr/confs/climates.html
Euro-Forum for Scientific Earth Drilling (Meeting)
16/03/2004 - 19/03/2004 - University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
We would like to draw your attention to the “Euro-Forum for Scientific Earth Drilling” which will be held at the University of Bremen in March (16.-19.03.2004).
Prof. Dr. H. Kudrai,Bundesanstalt for Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe,Stilleweg 2, 30655 Hannover,GermanyTel.: +49-(0)511-643-2790Fax: +49-(0)511-643-3663www.bgr.de/odp
Prof. Dr. R. Oberhunsi,Universitdt Potsdam, Institut for Geowissenschaften,Postfach 601553, 14415 Potsdam,GermanyTel: +49-(0)331-9775259
Organizer:http://www.rcom-bremen.de/English/IODPICDP_2004.html
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MYRES-I: Heat, Helium, Hotspots, and Whole Mantle Convection - (Meeting)
12/08/2004 - 15/08/2004 - La Jolla CA, USA
The topic of the four day MYRES-I school is Heat, Helium, Hotspots, and Whole Mantle Convection, with the goal to reevaluate models and constraints on Earth evolution and deep Earth structure.
The aim of MYRES is to further science by accelerating the growth of an interdisciplinary, international, open, and unbiased community of colleagues who interact regularly to informally exchange ideas, data, and tools, and formulate new collaborative research projects. Several novel strategies for more effective communication of science will be implemented, including peer reviewed and coordinated instruction. The keynote speakers for the four themes of MYRES-I are
*Heat and mass flux: Jie Li (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign) and Sujoy Mukhopadhyay (Harvard University).
*Nature of boundary layers: Christine Thomas (University of Liverpool) and Shijie Zhong (University of Colorado, Boulder).
*Constraints on interior dynamics: Wendy Panero (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and Frederik Simons (Princeton University).
*Surface observables as constraints: Magali Billen (University of California, Davis) and Cin-Ty Lee (Rice University).
More info from Dr. Thorsten Becker, [email protected]
Organizer: The Meeting of Young Researchers in the Earth SciencesLocal Organizers:Thorsten Becker and James Kellogg http://www.myres.org/myres1/
The 8th Scientific Conference of the International Global Atmospheric
Chemistry Project (IGAC) - (Meeting) 22/12/2003 - 31/08/2004 - Christchurch, New Zealand
Atmospheric Chemistry in the Environment Themes will include atmospheric chemistry in a variety of distinct regions such as the marine boundary layer, stratosphere, cryosphere, and urban areas as well as trans-boundary transport effects and global biogeochemical cycling. The Local Organizing Committee looks forward to welcoming you to this scientifically rewarding event held in the beautiful city of Christchurch in the spectacular South Island of New Zealand. Please join us there.
Session 1: Effect of aerosols on clouds and the hydrological cycle. (Ulrike Lohmann)
Session 2: Aerosol chemical composition. (Trish Quinn) Session 3: Climate-chemistry interaction (IGAC & SPARC
related). (Celine Mari) Session 4: Observing the atmosphere. (John Burrows) Session 5: Air-ice interactions including firn air and air
bubble chemistry. (Eric Wolff) Session 6: Reactive halogens in the troposphere. (Uli
Platt)
Session 7: Atmosphere-ocean interactions (IGAC & SOLAS related). (Mike Harvey and Cliff Law)
Session 8: Trans-boundary transport and transformation. (Dave Parrish)
Session 9: Mega cities. (Makoto Koike and Laura Gallardo-Klenner)
Session 10: Biomass burning, dust and light-absorbing aerosols. (Sandro Fuzzi)
Session 11: Toxic pollutants in the atmosphere. (Ilia Ilyin) Session 12: Oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere. (Kathy
Law) Session 13: Emission and deposition fluxes (IGAC &
ILEAPS related). (Phil Rasch) Session 14: Other aspects of atmospheric chemistry. (Tim
Bates)
If your topic doesn’t fit in sessions 1-13 don’t despair, submit it.
Invited Speakers: Susan Solomon, Phil Boyd, “Ravi” Ravishankara, Paulo Artaxo.
Programme Chairs: Ulrike Lohman, Phil Rasch, Sarah Masonis, Dave Lowe.
Organizer:The Local Organizing Commitee of IGAC of New Zealand.http://www.igaconference2004.co.nz/
SOLAS Science 2004 - (Meeting)
13/10/2004 - 16/10/2004 - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Welcome to SOLAS Science 2004, the first open science conference to present the results of SOLAS. The SOLAS project is focused on the biogeochemical-physical connectivities between the Earth’s two fluid systems and brings together scientists from a wide range of disciplines, all aiming to contribute our piece of the Earth system science jigsaw. The conference provides the opportunity for the presentation and discussion of the latest SOLAS results and aims to enable community building on both a national and international scale.
The conference is structured around a mixture of invited talks in the morning and poster and discussion sessions in the afternoon. We welcome suggestions of topics for the discussion sessions.
For details of the talks, please see the programme. The conference will be hosted in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada. For information about the area click here, also have a look at the tours that are available during the conference.
Organizer:http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/solas/ss04/
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2004 POGO-IOC-SCOR Fellowships(Meeting)
18/02/2004 - 15/03/2004 - Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
The Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO) and its partners, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), announce the Fellowship Programme for 2004. This programme is designed to promote training and capacity building leading towards a global observation scheme for the oceans.
This fellowship programme is open to scientists, technicians, graduate students (PhD) and Post Doctoral Fellows involved in oceanographic work at centres in developing countries and countries with economies in transition. In 2004, priority will be given to applicants from the Indian Ocean region, involved in, or planning to be involved in, the Indian Ocean GOOS initiatives.
Organizer:The Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans
(POGO) and its partnersThe Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
(IOC)andThe Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR)http://ocean-partners.org/fellowshipb.html
Pan Ocean Remote Sensing
Conference - (Meeting) 29/11/2004 - 03/12/2004 - Chile
To stimulate scientific and technological advanced training and specialization in Remote Sensing and in order to organize PORSEC- 2004, the University of Concepcion created in June 2002, under Resolution No.162, an ad hoc Inter-Faculty Committee (Engineering, Agricultural Engineering, Agronomy, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, Forestry Sciences, Natural Sciences and Oceanography and Center EULA). One of its main priorities was to initiate a programme of advanced courses directed to the specialization of graduate students, young professionals and researchers from the University, the country and Latin America in general.
The organization of the international event PORSEC-2004 (Pan Ocean Remote Sensing Conference) to take place at the University of Concepcion between 29 November and 3 December, 2004, has also given the opportunity to invite some reputed specialists and PORSEC members as Visiting Professors, to dictate these courses initiating an academic interaction towards further specialization and preparation for the event.
The University and the Committee cordially thank the sponsoring international organizations.
Contact e-mail: [email protected]
Organizer: University of Concepcion, Chilehttp://www.udec.cl/~porsec-2004/
Gordon Research Conference
Series: MARINE MICROBES PICOPHYTOPLANKTON, FROM
ECOLOGY TO GENOMICS - (Meeting) 06/06/2004 - 10/06/2004 - Roscoff, Brittany, France
This 2004 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) will be the first one of a New series dedicated to Marine Microbes. Microbes (i.e. virus, Bacteria, Archaea, Eukaryota; autotrophic and heterotrophic) lie at the heart of the functioning of all marine ecosystems, from the surface euphotic zone to deep hydrothermal vents. This series will be initiated with a conference on picophytoplankton because this field appears to be poised at a turning point. The meeting will first review recent advances in the taxonomy of picophytoplankton, especially the discovery of many novel eukaryotic groups both from culture and molecular-based field studies. In particular, we will cover extensively the new tools of molecular biology. Then, we will examine the physiology and ecology of picophytoplankton and revisit its role in the microbial food web. Finally we will dwell on the very exciting developments in picophytoplankton genomics and how the new knowledge will impact on our understanding of marine ecosystems.
Program and conference information:http://www.sb-roscoff.fr/Phyto/Meeting_GRC_2004/
Applications are done directly to the GRC web site atht tp : / /www.grc.org/scr ip ts /dbml.exe?Template=/
Application/apply1.dbm(Select 2004 Marine Microbes and follow instructions)
The organisers anticipate to have some limited financial support for conference fees and travel for Students and young Post-doctoral fellows (apply at
http://www.sb-roscoff.fr/Phyto/Meeting_GRC_2004/#support )
Also send an email to Daniel Vaulot ([email protected])and me ([email protected]) to notify the organisers
that you applied to the conference. This will help in the selection process.
Organizer:http://www.grc.org/programs/2004/marinemi.htm
