Minutes of the Business Meeting of IAGA WG V-OBS
Mérida, August 26th 2013
Agenda
1. Welcome and Agenda approval
2. Report on activity for the period from BM in Melbourne, July 2011
3. Report on the XV Observatory Workshop, San Fernando, 2012 (M. Catalan)
4. Information about the XVI Observatory Workshop that will be held in Hyderabad,
India in October 2014 (Kusumita Arora)
5. Proposals for organizing the Observatory Workshop in 2016
6. List of observatories and IAGA codes (A. Chulliat)
7. Instructions for obtaining IAGA codes
8. Proposal for sessions and conveners for IUGG GA 2015, Prague
9. Proposals for resolutions
10. AOB
1. Welcome and Agenda approval
Chair of the WG Pavel Hejda welcome the participants and presented the agenda. The agenda wasunanimously approved
2. Report on activity for the period from BM in Melbourne, July 2011
The most important activities were• site selection for XVI IAGA Observatory Workshop 2014 and cooperation with localorganizers during preparatory phase• cooperation with local organizers of the XV Observatory Workshop held in San Fernando in2012• new IAGA codes approved:o Cocos (Keeling) Island, Australia, CKI (confirmed July 2013, operated by
Geoscience Australia, Geomagnetism Section)o Wien Conrad Observatory, Austria,WIC (preliminary October 2011, operated byZAMG Wien)o Gan, Addu Atoll, Maldives, GAN – (preliminary January 2012, operated by ETHZurich)o Krasnoe Lake (St. Petersburg), KRO and Klimovskoe, KLI – (Preliminary August2013, operated by Geophysical Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow andIZMIRAN)• revision of list of observatories and IAGA codes
3. Report on the XV Observatory Workshop, San Fernando, 2012 (M. Catalan)
Manuel Catalan reported about the workshop, proceedings will be available in September inelectronic form, free of charge.
4. Information about the XVI Observatory Workshop that will be held in Hyderabad, India inOctober 2014 (Kusumita Arora)• co-organized by CSIR-NGRI and IIG• date 6 Oct - 16 Oct 2014 (science sessions from 13 to 16 October)• measurement sessions at Choupoutal observatory (60km from NGRI). This is a newgeomagnetic observatory (former MT station) with 1.5 year of data collection.
• it is recommended to book accommodation through NGRI (to ensure standard services, incl.
internet, etc)
• various funding options (including from Indian National Science Academy)• short leaflet was distributed among the participants• more information in the first circular, to be released in September
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5. Proposals for organizing the Observatory Workshop in 2016
The call for proposals was distributed via worldobs and imocontact mailing list. As no proposals
were received yet, the call will be repeated.
6. Revision of the list of observatories and IAGA codes
There are urgent reasons for the revision• master list of IAGA codes maintained by NGDC is not public (the institutions cannot checkcorrectness of their records)• observatory list on web pages of WDC Edinburgh contains only observatories that
contributed to this WDC• observatory list compiled by Jean Rasson and published on web
http://www.meteo.be/IAGA_WG_V.1/ is incomplete• there is a conflict of IAGA official codes with codes of some other working observatories(e.g. in China)
Measures adopted• chair and co-chair of the WG asked NGDC to transform the master list into a suitabledatabase form and display it on Web• authorized person of NGDC, Justin Mabie, started the revision and transformation bycomparing all data with archive paper records and this task is nearly finished• a small task force will be set up to carefully check the revised observatory list by comparing
it to publicly available metadata (for example in WDC)
• once this preliminary check is completed, the database will be made accessible togeomagnetic community for their comments on errors or missing data
• the official list of IAGA observatory codes will be displayed on the new web pages of WG
V-OBS that will be developed by BGS
7. Instructions for obtaining IAGA codes
It was discussed, whether IAGA code should be assigned only to observatories (with variometersand absolute measurements) or also to variometer stations. The consensus was for keeping therecent praxis and assign official and permanent IAGA code only to observatories with regularbaseline control. The approved “Guidelines for obtaining IAGA codes for magnetic observatories”
are attached.
Suggestion: separate variometer station and observatories and use 4-letter codes for variometerstations, in order to avoid confusion.
8. Proposal for sessions and conveners for IUGG GA 2015, Prague
1) Geomagnetic observatories; instrumental and operational news
Conveners: Bill Worthington, Juergen Matzka, B. Veendhari2) Ground-based and satellite geomagnetic data in the Swarm era.
Conveners: Susan Macmillan, Arnaud Chulliat, Heather McCreadie
Joint with V-MOD, V-DAT, I-1
3) Geomagnetic observations under a quiet Sun
Conveners: Masahito Nose
Joint with divisions II and IV
9. Proposals for resolutions
No proposals were submitted
10. AOB
Renata Lukianova noticed the 100th anniversary of Sodankyla observatory (established in
September 1913) – the first auroral observatory.
Pavel Hejda thanked the participants for their active involvement.
32 participants
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