Minutes of the Business Meeting of IAGA WG V-OBS
Prague, June 23, 2015
Agenda
1. Welcome and agenda approval
2. Report on activity for the period from BM in Merida, August 2013
3. Report on the XVIth Observatory Workshop held in Hyderabad, India, in October
2014 (Kusumita Arora)
4. Information about the XVIIth Observatory Workshop that will be held in Dourbes,Belgium, in 2016 (Jean Rasson)
5. List of observatories and IAGA codes
6. Proposal for sessions and conveners for IAGA SA 2017, Cape Town
7. Proposals for resolutions
8. Elections of WG Chair and Co-Chair
9. AOB
1. Welcome and agenda approval
WG Chair Pavel Hejda welcomed the participants and presented the agenda. The agenda wasunanimously approved.
2. Report on activity for the period from BM in Merida, August 2013
Main activities included the following:• XVIth IAGA Observatory Workshop was successfully held in Hyderabad in October 2014;see section below and in IAGA News 51, pp. 12-13.
• A new WG webpage is hosted by BGS: https://www.bgs.ac.uk/iaga/vobs/• List of observatories and IAGA codes: a synoptic table (spread sheet) was compiled from allavailable catalogues under the supervision of a task force composed of Pavel Hejda (chair),Arnaud Chulliat, Justin Mabie, Masahito Nose, Susan Macmillan, and Alan Thomson. This
table is available as a Google Fusion table (created by Ewan Dawson) on the WG website.
• Status of observatories - new IAGA codes:
o Code KRO Krasnoe Lake (St. Petersburg) was changed to SPG St. Petersburg(Krasnoe Lake) - request from GC RASo Choutuppal, India, CPL (status preliminary, November 2013, operated by NGRI
Hyderabad)o St Helena, SHE (status open, February 2013, GFZ-Potsdam)o Santa Maria, Azores, SMA (preliminary, February 2014, GFZ-Potsdam)o Pantanal, Brazil, PNL (preliminary, February 2014)o Amazon (Tefe), AMZ (preliminary, February 2014)o Port Blair, India, PBR (preliminary, April 2014, Indian Institute of Geomagnetism)o Rajkot, India, RKT (preliminary, April 2014, Indian Institute of Geomagnetism)o Fort McMurray, Canada, FMC (preliminary, August 2014, BGS)o Lampedusa Island, Italy, LMP (preliminary, May 2015, Istituto Nazionale diGeofisica e Vulcanologia)
3. Report on the XVIth Observatory Workshop held in Hyderabad, India, in October 2014
(Kusumita Arora)
Kusumita Arora reported on the workshop, which was attended by 90 delegates from 31 countries.
The measurement session was held at the newly installed Choutuppal observatory, located about 60
km from Hyderabad. Workshop proceedings will be published later this year (deadline formanuscript submission was July 15, 2015). The full report is available here:
http://www.ngri.org.in/iaga2013_14/pdffiles/IAGA_2014_%20Report.pdf
4. Information about the XVIIth Observatory Workshop that will be held in Dourbes,Belgium, in 2016 (Jean Rasson)1•••••••••

Date: The workshop will be held from September 4 to 10 (tentative schedule), with intercomparison measurements on Sept 5-7, and science sessions on Sept 8-10.
Location: Dourbes observatory and nearby Castel of Pont-à-Lesse hotel (the same hotel as in1994; single room 95 euros/night, incl. breakfast). Transport will be organized for theparticipants between Brussels and the workshop hotel/Observatory.
Workshop sponsors will provide funding to 15 to 30 participants.
Dourbes observatory will provide continuous baseline measurements at hourly intervals withthe automatic Diflux AUTODIF, continuously running stable variometers (3 for minutedata, 1 for second data), stable pillars for absolute DI measurements (3 inside, 3 outside) andprecision calibration of proton magnetometers in stabilized field.
Pre-workshop variometer testing is planned.
Training sessions will be arranged for DIflux and proton magnetometer measurement
practice, baseline reduction, and definitive data processing.
3 observatory staff will assist the participants with data encoding and processing.
INTERMAGNET sessions and space weather presentations will be running in parallel with
instrument inter-comparisons (TBC).
More information in the first circular, to be released later this year.

5. List of observatories and IAGA codes
The new, official list is available as a Google Fusion Table on the WG website hosted by BGS:
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/iaga/vobs/home.html.
Interactions with the observatory community are required, as over 90 observatories are listed as“uncertain”.
Several suggestions were made by BM participants to improve the list in the future:• Clarify the decision process to move an observatory from “uncertain” to “close”.
• WG leadership to review the list every ~2 years.
• Add a contact person field in the table.
• Add an altitude field.
• Allow more than one institution to be listed in the “responsible institute” field.
6. Proposal for sessions and conveners for IAGA SA 2017, Cape Town
1) Ground magnetic observations: instrumentation improvements, data processing and operation
Conveners: Kusumita Arora, Andriy Marusenkov
2) Applications of ground magnetic data and indices for space weather, space climate andcommercial sector (together with V-DAT, Div. IV)
Conveners: Aude Chambodut, Ellen Clarke3) Secular variation studies from ground and satellite data (together with V-MOD)
Conveners: Vincent Lesur
7. Proposals for resolutions
No proposals were submitted.
8. Elections of WG Chair and Co-Chair
Arnaud Chulliat was elected as Chair and Jurgen Matzka was elected as Co-Chair.
9. AOB• Participants were informed of the date and place of the next Business Meeting of EPOS
(European Plate Observing System) during the IUGG conference.
• Alan Thomson, Chair of Division V, thanked Pavel Hejda for his service as WG V-OBS CoChair and then Chair.
Pavel Hejda thanked the participants for their active involvement.
46 participants2