Dr. Tillmann Mohr
EUMETSAT
EUMETSAT hosted the 14th CEOS Plenary meeting and the 4th meeting of the IGOS Partnership in Stockholm from 10-12 November, 1999. The Swedish National Space Board (SNSB) supported the organisation of the meetings.
The CEOS Plenary was opened by Dr.Per Tegner, President of the SNSB.
The Plenary's first, and pleasant, task was to accept the Argentinean Comision
Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) as a Member, and the International
Ocean Colour Coordinating Group (IOCCG) as an Associate, bringing the total
CEOS membership to 40 : 21 Members and 19 Associates.
CEOS business centred mainly around four principal subjects :
- taking forward the IGOS Partnership ;
- outreach activities ;
- the activities of the working groups ;
- relations with the Earth Observation private sector.
The IGOS Partners meeting focussed primarily on the first two of these
issues, confirmed the consequential actions for CEOS.
The Partnership discussed Dr Eric Lindstrom's (NASA) report from
the Oceans Theme team, and made a number of suggestions for incorporation
in the final report which is due to appear early in 2000. It urged the
Partners to consider the recommendations and implement them within their
programmes. On this basis the CEOS Plenary agreed that the SIT should convene
early in 2000 to address the space observations, whilst IOC offered to
lead on the in situ
issues. To this end CEOS extended the mandate of the Strategic Implementation
Team (SIT) for a further year, under the chairmanship of Jean-Louis Fellous
(CNES), and with Mr.M.Konaka (STA) as Vice-Chairman.
The Partnership also agreed to constitute a theme team on the Global
Carbon Cycle, and further agreed that there would be three elements. The
Terrestrial Carbon Cycle element will involve GTOS, IGBP and FAO. The Ocean
Carbon Cycle element would be included in the Oceans Theme Report, and
Partners agreed to nominate participants for this part of the Oceans Team,
who would support NASA. An over-arching activity to link the terrestrial
and ocean elements of the Global Carbon Cycle would be started with GCOS,
GOOS, IGBP, GTOS, and NASA all involved. These partners would decide which
organization should lead the activity. Consideration of the proposal
for a theme team on Disaster Applications was deferred to a future IGOS-P
meeting,
to allow for further discussion between the potential contributors.
It is now clear that the IGOS Partnership has reached a level of maturity which allows it to deal effectively with the complex series of tasks it faces. The incoming Chairman, Dr.Robert Landis of WMO, confirmed that the next meeting will be held in Geneva in June, 2000.
(to be continued on page 5.)
