Attending the IUGG in Canada
From July 8th to July 17th the 27th International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) General Assembly with approximately 5000 participants was held in the Palais des Congrès in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. Two of our Postdocs and one PhD attended the conference.
The International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO) is one of eight Associations of the IUGG which, in turn, is one of the 40 scientific Unions and Associations presently grouped within the International Science Council (ISC). The IUGG General assembly is held every four years, alternating with assemblies of a subset of the associations forming the IUGG, including the IAPSO.
In the framework of the TRR 181 especially the session on “Mixing Processes in the Ocean” was of great interest: In roughly 40 talks (including our own) and the additional poster session a wide variety of studies was presented and discussed. Due to the numerous attendance of well known experts in the field we could get a broad overview of current and planned projects in the fields of observational and theoretical oceanography. During the coffee breaks and poster sessions we had ample opportunity to strengthen and expand our network in the internal wave and mixing community. The discussions with our project partner Zhongxiang Zhao from the University of Seattle as well as with other attendants were fruitful and helped to identify new collaboration possibilities.
An early career event organized by the IAPSO provided a very good framework to set up a new network for early career scientists in the field of physical oceanography. The newly founded early career network is intended to grow within the next months with a mailing list as a first step for the regular distribution of information relevant for early career scientists. Later, the setup of a mentoring program is planned to bring together IAPSO scientists from early and later career stages. The networking event was a nice evening where we got to know several other early career scientists from countries all over the world. It was also a good opportunity to have a chat with members from the IAPSO executive committee.
In addition to mixing processes a variety of other oceanographic topics such as “The Meridional Overturning Circulation: Mean State and Variability”, “Oceanic Boundary Current Systems”, “The Southern Ocean: Where Ocean, Ice and Atmosphere Meet”, “Tides of the Oceans, Atmosphere, Solid Earth, Lakes and Planets” was covered during this week. These sessions gave a good overview of the current results and questions in the respective areas and also provided helpful background information for the upcoming proposal for the next phase of the TRR181.
The IUGG General Assembly was an inspiring and successful conference for us and we would be glad to participate in the next IAPSO meeting in 2021 and the next IUGG General Assembly in 2023, which (as was decided in Montreal) will be held in Berlin.