Geophysical Year Research Articles

Antarctic Cosmic Ray Astronomy

AbstractCosmic ray observations related to Antarctica commenced in the austral summer of 1947-48 from sub-Antarctic Heard and Macquarie Islands and from the HMAS Wyatt Earp. Muon telescope observations from Mawson station, Antarctica, followed from 1955. The International Geophysical Year was the impetus for the installation of a number of neutron monitors around Antarctica, observing the lowest energy cosmic rays accessible by ground based instruments. In 1971 a new observatory was built at Mawson including the only underground muon telescope system at polar latitudes in either hemisphere. Over more than half a century, cosmic ray astronomy has been undertaken from Antarctica and its surrounding regions and these observations have been critical to our growing understanding of the heliosphere.

Shaping Up Planet Earth

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences played a major role in preparing for the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The IGY organizers realized the importance of selling U.S. participation in international science and thus began a public relations effort by the mid-1950s that included the production of classroom materials and a film series, called Planet Earth, designed for television. This is the story of their efforts to bring the earth, atmospheric, and oceanic sciences into the classrooms and living rooms of the lay public and attract more students into scientific careers. The lessons they learned still apply today as researchers attempt to sell their science using new media and technologies.

Some snapshots from fifty years of geophysics

A person lucky enough to have worked in different aspects of geophysics in Australia over the last fifty years is sure to have a treasure trove of rich memories. Australia has the great good fortune to be a whole continent within one national boundary, and to be a marvellous laboratory for geophysical methods. The developments in geophysics which have taken place in Australia have been based, and have indeed been possible, because of strong rigorous traditions existing in mathematics, physics and geology. A perspective to the present state of geophysics is obtained be re-visiting various geophysical experiences over fifty years. The path followed commences with trigonometrical surveying (which allows the fifty years time span!) and progresses through various aspects of magnetic and electromagnetic measurements. Part of the journey takes place on land, some is airborne, and some is by sea. Developments in electronics, and computers, have made geophysics a rapidly-developing and exciting subject. The last fifty years of exploration work in Australia have taken place against the proving and acceptance of continental drift, plate tectonics and mantle convection. It has therefore been a time of remarkable intellectual stimulation and activity, of the widest possible importance to humankind.

What is the International Heliophysical Year?

More than a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), the International Heliophysical Year (IHY) planned for 2007 will be a program of coordinated research in the tradition of a long succession of international programs, of which the IGY is arguably the most famous. One might justifiably ask, “Yet another coordinated research program? Given all the others, what will IHY have to offer? Will it lead to better science or just more science?” To address these and other questions, nearly 60 scientists participated in the U.S. Planning Workshop for the IHY last April at the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico.The workshop, organized into four working groups on the Sun, the heliosphere, magnetospheres and ionospheres, and atmospheres and climate, took up the challenge posed by these critical questions.

Comment on “Moving beyond the IGY: The Electronic Geophysical Year (eGY) Concept”

In their Eos article (16 March 2004), Daniel Baker and his colleagues acknowledged that one of the key achievements of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) was the establishment of data centers. I am sure that the authors are well aware of the importance of these data centers. I am concerned, however, by statements such as: “…researchers can redefine the ‘data center’ concept…” I am also concerned that some readers may interpret the overall proposed concept as one that is moving beyond the need for data centers, i.e., the concept of “…free access to all available data through the Internet and World Wide Web. That is, all data providers and data users will exchange the data directly establishing a worldwide fabric (or grid) of geophysical data.”

Reply [to Comment on “Moving beyond the IGY: The Electronic Geophysical Year (eGY) concept’”

Robert Benson raises interesting points regarding the eGY and the role of world data centers. We share the belief that the WDC system was one of the great achievements of the IGY. We have also supported the many and varied activities of data centers over the years. The eGY is not intended to replace data centers, but rather to enhance them.

Propagation Corner

This paper is an obituary in memory of Dr. Kenichi Miya who made many contributions in the research of radio waves and satellite communications. Dr. Miya was been a president of the International Communications Society (ISCS) and involved in ionospheric research during the International Geophysical Year, 1957-58. In honor of his many achievements, he received the IEEE award in International Communications in 1987.

Oral histories in meteoritics and planetary science: XIII: Fred L. Whipple

Abstract— Born in Red Oak, Iowa, in 1906, Fred Lawrence Whipple earned his Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley in 1931. He immediately accepted a position at the Harvard College Observatory and remained at Harvard throughout his career. In 1950, he was appointed to the Phillips Professorship in the Department of Astronomy, and in 1955, he began serving concurrently as the Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory when it moved from Washington, D.C. to Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the 1930s, Whipple established the Harvard Meteor Project in which two cameras, 26 miles apart, simultaneously photographed the same meteors, for which he invariably derived elliptical orbits indicative of their origin within the solar system. In 1950, Whipple introduced his “dirty snowball” model of comet nuclei, which soon became widely accepted and was fully confirmed in 1986 by close‐up images of comet Halley taken by the European Space Agency's Giotto spacecraft. Keenly anticipating the orbiting of satellites during the International Geophysical Year (July 1, 1957‐December 31, 1958), Whipple won contracts to build a worldwide network of telescopic cameras for satellite tracking. At least one of the cameras was ready in time to photograph the Soviet Union's Sputnik I satellite in October 1957, and all 12 stations were in operation by midsummer of 1958. For his leadership role in this project, President John Kennedy honored Fred L. Whipple in June 1963 with the President's Award for Distinguished Public Service. In the 1960s, Whipple collaborated with astronomers at the University of Arizona to build a new observatory on Mt. Hopkins, 40 miles south of Tucson. Two of the most innovative instruments installed there for astrophysical research were the world's largest gamma‐ray detector and the Multiple‐Mirror Telescope. In 1982, the Mt. Hopkins Observatory was rededicated as the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. Although he retired in 1973, Whipple was present at the dedication and until 2003, he continued to actively participate in research projects. At present, he is anticipating the return of the Stardust mission to comet Wild 2, which will bring back to Earth samples of the comet and of interstellar dust. It is scheduled to arrive in 2006, the year of Fred Whipple's 100th birthday. Among his many honors, Fred Whipple received the Leonard Medal from the Meteoritical Society in 1970 at its meeting hosted by the Goddard Space Flight Center, in Skyland, Virginia.

Space Weather Research to Benefit From IGY Anniversary

Retrieving new records of past solar activity and increasing access to current observations of the space environment are among plans to honor the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year

National Observatories: Contention Continues

McCray replies: I am pleased at the interest my article generated. Both William Howard and Cameron Reed bring up excellent points.As Howard suggests, one feature that distinguishes American astronomy from its counterparts in other countries is its long tradition of private, state, and philanthropic support, which continues to this day. Unlike many other areas of science—nuclear physics, for example—optical astronomy’s private patrons continued to provide generous support even after the federal government became an important postwar patron. The complementary and often competitive relationship between the private and public observatory systems in the US continues to be a powerful force in the community. An indication of the importance of that relationship is the ongoing debate over how to fund and build the next generation of giant telescopes (see Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 56 8 2003 22 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1611344. August 2003, page 22 ). One is struck by the similarity between optical astronomy and the private–public race in the 1990s to decode the human genome. As J. Merton England’s book A Patron for Pure Science: The National Science Foundation’s Formative Years, 1945–57 (NSF, 1982) shows, NSF saw astronomy as an especially promising area in which to invest in large-scale science facilities. Given the monopoly that the Atomic Energy Commission had on the funding of big accelerators for high-energy physics, fields like astronomy and multidisciplinary endeavors like Antarctic exploration and the International Geophysical Year offered a way for NSF to invest in postwar big science.Although making the national optical observatories dominant may not have been NSF’s stated purpose, the decision to not pursue that goal certainly raised eyebrows in the scientific community. It is hard to identify many areas of postwar science in which national research facilities were of lesser size, scale, or power compared with their private counterparts. During numerous interviews for my recent book Giant Telescopes: Astronomical Ambition and the Promise of Technology (Harvard U. Press, 2004), astronomers frequently mentioned that, in the 1970s, the national telescope’s 4-meter mirror on Kitt Peak was smaller than that in the privately owned 5-meter telescope on Palomar. The situation—indeed, the same ratio—persisted with the two 10-meter Keck telescopes versus the two 8-meter Gemini telescopes. Reed makes a salient point. Whether to close smaller observatories in favor of building new and bigger facilities is a critical issue in the formulation of US science policy for astronomy. Such decisions are made more difficult by the productivity of smaller telescopes and their role in training students. As Reed notes, perhaps the best system is one that favors “democratic meritocracy.” The continuing challenge facing the science community would appear to be how to achieve that ideal.© 2004 American Institute of Physics.

Moving beyond the IGY: The Electronic Geophysical Year (eGY) concept

The International Geophysical Year (1957–1958) was inspired by the realization that much better and more complete information was needed about the Earth and geospace to understand and manage the complete terrestrial environment on which we depend. So it was that the IGY member countries worked together to deploy a large number of geophysical observatories around the world. These nations were pursuing the major IGY objectives to collect geophysical data as widely as possible, and to provide free access to these data for all scientists around the globe. About 50 permanent stations were set up in the Arctic and Antarctic, and the World Data Center System was established to ensure that the data collected were properly archived and made available without restrictions for scientific research and practical applications.

The Sea of Okhotsk crust from deep seismic sounding data

The crustal structure of the Sea of Okhotsk was investigated by way of reinterpreting the data obtained along 22 deep seismic sounding (DSS) profiles. Eight profiles traversed the Sea of Okhotsk. These seismic surveys were performed during the International Geophysical Year in 1958-1959 by the researchers from the Institute of the Physics of the Earth, USSR Academy of Sciences. Seven profiles were surveyed in 1963-1964 near the shores of Sakhalin Island by geophysicists from the Institute of the Physics of the Earth (USSR Academy of Sciences) and from the Sakhalin Multidisciplinary Research Institute. The new interpretation of the seismic data confirmed the earlier ideas of the reduced crustal thickness in the deep-sea basins of the Sea of Okhotsk, such as, the Kuril Basin, the Deryugin and Tinro basins, the sedimentary trough of the Tatar Strait, where the Moho surface showed low boundary velocities of seismic waves, not higher than 7.6-7.8 km s 1 . It appears that the sedimentary basins of the Sea of Okhotsk reside above asthenospheric diapirs including magma chambers. A system of rifts and spreading centers was mapped in the northern and central parts of the Sea of Okhotsk, in the Tatar Strait, and in the Kuril Basin. Paleosubduction zones that had been active during the late Cretaceous and Early Paleogene time and are marked by ophiolite belts at the present time have been traced in the earth crust near the eastern shores of Sakhalin. Remnants of paleosubduction zones were mapped using seismic data in the Sea of Okhotsk along the Okhotsk-Chukotka volcanic belt, which seem to be the fragments of a lithospheric plate that had been going down under the active continental margin in Mesozoic time.

International heliophysical year: a program of global research continuing the tradition of previous international years

In 1957 a program of international research, inspired by the International Polar Years of 1882–1883 and 1932–1933, was organized as the International Geophysical Year (IGY) to study global phenomena of the Earth and geospace. The IGY involved about 60,000 scientists from 66 nations, working at thousands of stations from pole to pole, in an effort to obtain simultaneous, global observations on Earth and in space. There had never been anything like it before. The 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year will occur in 2007. We propose to organize an international program of scientific collaboration for this time period called the International Heliophysical Year (IHY). Like its predecessors, the IHY will focus on fundamental global questions of Earth science.

The international geophysical year in Antarctica: Uncommon collaborations, unprecedented results

When 1 July 1957 “dawned” in the dark of the south polar night, Americans at seven scientific stations scattered across Antarctica officially began systematic, synoptic observations of the air above and ice below. Joining scientists from 11 other countries on the polar continent, they were part of the International Geophysical Year, an 18-month worldwide effort to understand the earth and its environment. The Navy and other military services provided the transportation, construction, and maintenance to make life and work possible on the ice. The scientific success and value of the IGY inspired a mechanism—the Antarctic Treaty of 1959—for a peaceful future focused on the cooperative pursuit of scientific knowledge. While imperfect and fragile, the treaty is still in force and, with continuing military and civilian support, scientific research in Antarctica prospers. All this was achieved in a remarkably short time, by disparate, thinly acquainted, mutually wary cultures—military, scientific, and diplomatic. All the more astonishing is that it happened within the tense context of the Cold War, as statesmen and warriors were wise enough to allow “apolitical” scientists to lead where they could not.

Thirty-seven degrees frigid: US-chilean relations and the spectre of polar arrivistes, 1950–59

After its 1948 proposal to internationalize Antarctica had been rejected, the United States accepted the Chilean Escudero Plan as a necessiry for avoiding further political disputes among the seven nations that had balked at the proposal's call to renounce their sovereign rights. US and Chilean officials proceeded to discuss revisions that might enhance the Escudero Plan's acceptabiliry to the other nations, all of which shared the goal of excluding the Soviet Union. Before there had been any substantial progress, the 1957–58 International Geophysical Year legitimated the USSRs presence in the far south, and already tense US-Chilean relations entered a phase of heightened apprehensiveness. This article explores the diplomatic and contextual nuances of this bilateral interaction that proved central in bringing the Antarctic Treary of 1959 to fruition.

Residual solar cycle influence on trends in ionospheric F2‐layer peak height

The longest data sets available for estimating thermospheric temperature trends are those from ground‐based ionosondes, which often begin during the International Geophysical Year of 1957, close to a solar activity maximum. It is important to investigate inconsistencies in trend estimates from these data sets so that trends can be clearly determined. Here we use selected ionosonde stations to show that one of the most significant factors affecting the trend estimates is the removal of the solar cycle. The stations show trend behavior that is close to the behavior of a theoretical model of damped harmonic oscillation. The ringing features are consistent with the presence of solar cycle residuals from the analysis with an amplitude of 2.5 km. Some stations do not show trend behavior that is close to either the average behavior of the stations studied here or the theoretical model of oscillation. Four European stations (Poitiers, Lannion, Juliusruh, and Slough), three of which are closely located in western Europe, were analyzed with the expectation that their trend should be similar. Only Poitiers and Juliusruh showed an evolution that was close to the average behavior of other stations, while the other two were significantly different. The primary cause of this appears to be changes in the M(3000)F2 parameter and demonstrates the importance of incorporating consistency checks between neighboring ionosondes into global thermospheric trend estimates.

The International Polar Year in 2007

Anniversaries punctuate all our lives, providing the semicolons that cause us to pause and think again. Everyone has plenty of personal anniversaries but there are also cultural and institutional ones that we can use as an opportunity to remember but also as a platform to leap forward. How far have we come and where do we want to be in the future? The recent announcement of an International Polar Year (IPY) in 2007 is linked to the fiftieth anniversary of the International Geophysical Year, an event that proved to have such momentous consequences both for Antarctic science and for international politics.

Total ozone observations prior to the IGY. II: Data and quality

AbstractThis paper is the second part of a systematic compilation of total ozone observations prior to the International Geophysical Year (IGY), July 1957 to June 1958. The first part provides an overview of the locations, instruments, observers and type of observations. For this second part, 17 data series were selected for further evaluation and quality assessment. We present daily observations from 13 Dobson‐stations in Europe (1952–57), from College, Alaska (1952–54, 1957), New York (1941–44) and Zi‐Ka‐Wei in China (1932–36) as well as monthly mean values for Århus, Denmark (1940–44) and Zi‐Ka‐Wei (1937–42). The data were mostly re‐evaluated using statistical techniques because original instrument readings and calibration information were not available in most cases. The quality was assessed by comparisons with meteorological variables (local 100 hPa temperature and 300 hPa geopotential height) and neighbouring total ozone series. Unreliable values were flagged, and corrections are proposed in some cases. The quality assessment shows that about half of the series can be used for scientific applications. They cannot be used, however, for trend analysis. © Royal Meteorological Society, 2003. S. F. G. Farmer's contribution is Crown copyright

Total ozone observations prior to the IGY. I: A history

AbstractCurrent data archives of total ozone measurements, with only few exceptions, provide data only since the International Geophysical Year (IGY, July 1957 to June 1958) when a global network was established. However, total ozone data from the period prior to the IGY could be useful to study the past variability of the stratosphere. For this purpose, we have systematically compiled information and data from approximately 60 total ozone measurement series prior to 1957. This paper provides an overview of the measurement principles and techniques, discusses the historical and scientific context of the observations and summarizes specific information for each series (location, time period of observation, instrument, responsible person, current state and availability of the data, references). In an accompanying paper the quality of 17 data series is critically assessed and some corrections are proposed. © Royal Meteorological Society, 2003. S. F. G. Farmer's contribution is Crown copyright

Potential of airborne geophysical capabilities discussed

Antarctica is a key element in Earth's geodynamic and climatic systems. Nevertheless, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year, we lack fundamental geologic and geophysical data from the deep interior of this vast continent. Meager exposures record the 3500‐million‐year history of a continent that participated in the formation and breakup of both the Rodinia and Gondwana super‐continents. It continues to be tectonically active today although its kinematic relationship to the global plate circuit and its role as sub‐ strate to the world's major ice sheets remain in question.