Draft Minutes of the Third Meeting of the IAGA Executive Committee in Sapporo, 10 July 2003
The President opened the meeting at 1300 and welcomed and introduced Marvin Geller and Joe Allen (President and Scientific Secretary, respectively, of SCOSTEP), and Kevin Hamilton (Chair of ICMA). (The meeting Agenda is in Appendix 1.)
M. Geller informed the Executive Committee about the status of SCOSTEP's programme CAWSES. The IAGA Secretary General was asked to act as a contact person for SCOSTEP, together with Wolfgang Baumjohann. SCOSTEP was in favour of CAWSES being included in the IAGA plans for IGY+50.
K. Hamilton commented on ICMA participation in the Toulouse 2005 Scientific Assembly. He estimated that 150-200 ICMA scientists would be expected to come to Toulouse.
D. Baker joined the meeting to report on the work of the IGY+50 Task Group. He commented that following presentations made at the IAGA Divisions' Business Meetings the plans put forward appeared to be supported by all sections of IAGA.
The Executive Committee approved the IAGA budgets for 2003-2005 (Agenda item 6).
The format and content of the IAGA web site (Agenda item 10) was discussed. It was agreed that an up-to-date site was vital to keeping IAGA scientists in contact with the Association's activities. D. Kerridge undertook to continue to maintain the site and invited any further comments on its organisation to be sent to him by email*.
It was agreed that IAGA News (Agenda item 11) should keep the same name even though the format would change to an electronic newsletter. The Division Leaders would be asked to provide items for inclusion and to encourage Working Group chairs to do so also. Selected news about IAGA relevant to a wider IUGG community should be placed in the IUGG E-journal.
The President presented the list of new Division and Commission leaders proposed by the Divisions and Commissions. The geographical distribution of the candidates was clearly not ideal. The matter was discussed at some length, and the EC finally decided to accept the proposed leadership. It was agreed that a better, more co-ordinated selection process must be worked out before the next election of officers to ensure that a more balanced geographical distribution would be achieved in the future.
In a wider discussion on IAGA procedures it was noted that there had been discussions at previous EC meetings about the need for an "IAGA Officers' Manual" explaining the tasks and duties of IAGA officers. This would be particularly useful for scientists taking up administrative duties within IAGA for the first time. Both Charles Barton and Ibrahim Eltayeb had created partial documents and it was agreed to ask Ibrahim Eltayeb to merge the two documents to produce a first draft manual.
C. Barton had contacted Division officers before the Sapporo Assembly concerning the need for new IAGA Guides (Agenda item 12). A guide on magnetic activity indices was in preparation, but no strongly supported suggestions for other titles had been received yet.
The question of medals for application of IAGA sciences (Agenda item 13) was left for consideration at the next EC meeting after Sapporo.
Further action on the proposed Young Scientists' Committee (Agenda item 14) was deferred for the attention of the IAGA EC for 2003-2007.
Reports from various bodies with links to IAGA (Agenda item 18) had been circulated for information prior to the EC meetings in Sapporo and no comments were made.
The nine resolutions that had been brought forward through the Division and Commission Business Meetings for consideration by the IAGA Conference of Delegates were presented by the Resolutions Committee and discussed.
Having established that there were no other matters requiring consideration, the President thanked the EC members for their work for IAGA over the last four years and closed the meeting at 1530.
Bengt Hultqvist
Secretary General
Acronyms
ICMA - International Commission on the Middle Atmosphere
SCOSTEP - Scientific Committee on Solar Terrestrial Physics
CAWSES - Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System
* Action items for the future are in bold print.
