Antarctic ice thickness sounding, and the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition during the IGY

I try to be careful about expanding the scope of my two topical collections (IGY and North American earthquakes). This is a short explanation of the decision to expand of my IGY collection to include the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955–1958.

I was catching up on reading some old issues of magazines and journals, and I came across an article entitled "How Thick Is Antarctic Ice, and What Is Underneath? Scientists used electromagnetic fields to determine the thickness of fast ice," by Saima May Sidik, in Eos, 104, published by the American Geophysical Union,  22 February 2023.

This news article describes a paper by Langhorne et al. that provided more reliable estimates of Antarctic fast ice (sea ice that is "fastened" to the coastline, to the sea floor along shoals, or to grounded icebergs - see figure below) thickness by using a technique of airborne geophysics, specifically electromagnetic induction sounding. A sensor called a “bird” is towed beneath the aircraft at an altitude of 15 meters above ground level. A magnetic field is transmitted through the ice into the conductive seawater  below which then induces electric currents that the bird can detect. The resulting data are used to infer the ice thickness. This technique has several advantages over previous methods: a wider geographic range than drilling into the ice; penetration of saline sea ice, unlike radar; and more certain estimates than satellites.

Some of the most common sea-ice related features, including  fast ice. The bear provides an approximate scale for this scenario (Wikipedia)

The researchers used the system to survey a 700-km-long section of coast in the Ross Sea, home to the Scott Base, McMurdo, and Zucchelli research stations (see a map of the stations in this post). The area is known for its floating glaciers and ice shelves which are stabilized by fast ice. Fast ice in the region was found to be typically 2-3 meters thick. 

A search revealed that a stamp issued in 2022 by New Zealand's Ross Dependency depicts this method (Scott NZ-RO L177), showing a helicopter towing a bird (see right). This image is from colnect, not my collection. This stamp is one of four stamps comprising a Science on Ice miniature sheet.

Determining Antarctic ice thickness was also a goal of the IGY, although more for the continental ice sheet rather than for fast ice. For example, right after I left off my reviews in this blog of the IGY Bulletin with Number 9, issue Number 10 started with an article on "IGY Antarctic oversnow traverses." It describes three major oversnow traverses planned by the U.S. IGY Committee for the 1957-58 summer season, shown on the map below.

Traverses across the Ross Ice Shelf from the Little America Station, over parts of Marie Byrd Land and the Ellsworth Highland from Byrd Station, and across the Filchner Ice Shelf and parts of Edith Ronne Land from Ellsworth Station.

On these traverses, coring along with ground-based geophysical methods of seismics, gravity, and geomagnetism were used to infer continental ice sheet thicknesses of as much as 10,000 feet (3000 m).

Simplified cross-sectional profiles of the continental ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica (https://opentextbc.ca/geology/chapter/16-2-how-glaciers-work/)

Scott GB-AT 47, my collection

I wondered if there were any IGY stamps that focused on Antarctic ice thickness. Another search in colnect led me to such a stamp on seismic depth sounding from the British Antarctic Territory (Scott GB-AT 147, shown at right), issued in 1988 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition of 1955-58. This was from a four-stamp series which I then bought. 

The other three stamps in the series, shown here, have themes of the aurorae, aircraft, and a Sno-cat.

I also bought this first day cover with cachet including all four of the stamps.

Cover showing all four stamps from the BAT 1988 set commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (scanned from online, since my purchase has not yet arrived).

I decided this Expedition and its anniversary would be legitimate components of my IGY collection. According to Wikipedia:

The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (CTAE) of 1955–1958 was a Commonwealth-sponsored expedition that successfully completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica, via the South Pole. It was the first expedition to reach the South Pole overland for 46 years, preceded only by Amundsen's expedition and Scott's expedition in 1911 and 1912.

It was headed by British explorer Vivian Fuchs, with New Zealander [mountaineer] Sir Edmund Hillary leading the New Zealand Ross Sea Support team. The New Zealand party included scientists participating in International Geophysical Year [emphasis mine] research while the British team were separately based at Halley Bay.

Route map of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Reed Gallery)

The British Antarctic Territory (consisting of the South Shetland Islands, South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula with a sector of the continent extending to the South Pole) issued stamps in 1963, 1966, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, and then annually since 1977. It's interesting that the BAT only issued these four Antarctic stamps in 1988, the lowest number in any one year. A smoothed graph I made of the issuances per year shows a 5-year decline starting after 1983, then a general rise until 2012 and another decrease since then. Whatever significance there may be in these trends is beyond me.

Issuance of stamps by British Antarctic Territory. Data from Colnect.

More on related covers in future posts.

My presentation on geophilately at the Geological Society of America meeting

For those of you only want the link to the Slides show of the presentation, you will find it here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11uigQohlpkoor0E6n5_XLtwLmSy5SVKWfB4vNEo_xWQ/edit?usp=drive_link

Although I have been very quiet here, I have been keeping busy with my two geoscience-oriented philatelic collections, the one on the International Geophysical Year that I have been working on for 20-some years that I highlight in this blog, and the more recent one -- last three years or so -- on U.S. earthquakes. 

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the U.S. did not initially issue a stamp commemorating Explorer 1, which was the second satellite to orbit the Earth, after the Soviets' Sputnik 1. A document signed by CIA director Allen Dulles stated that "it might be unwise to issue such a stamp in view of the obvious disparity which now exists between our accomplishments in the satellite field and those of the USSR."

Well, apparently there is what I think is an analogous reason for the fact that the U.S. has never issued a stamp about an earthquake or any other natural disaster. I mentioned the U.S. Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee in an earlier post. The Committee stated its criteria for possible U.S. stamps in 2019 as given at https://about.usps.com/who/csac/#criteria. One criterion on the list states that:

The stamp program commemorates positive contributions to American life, history, culture and environment; therefore, negative occurrences and disasters will not be commemorated on U.S. postage stamps or stationery.

That would seem to rule out earthquake stamps, as well as being second to the Soviets. 

My collection consists of about 250 postcards, some letters, and a few cinderella stamps about U.S. (and a few other North American) earthquakes. My ideal item is a postcard that was posted from the epicentral region soon after the earth occurred with a picture of the affected region and a written message related to the earthquake.

Other nations do issue earthquake stamps, either to raise money with so called semi-postal (charity) stamps, because of the historical significance of such events, to honor those who were impacted, or to recognize recovery efforts. (I have a few such stamps, one shown below, but I am not collecting them.)

Commemorative mini-sheet of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, from my collection

Anyway, back to the presentation I will be giving. I winnowed my professional memberships after retirement. I had stayed a member of the American Geophysical Union, but resigned from the Geological Society of America. But a couple of months ago, I had a look at the GSA website, and noticed the GSA annual meeting was coming to Pittsburgh, in my state of Pennsylvania albeit on the other end. I had wondered whether my stamp collections in the general area I like to call geophilately would warrant a presentation at a professional meeting. You know, add a bit of professional veneer to my hobby. And I noticed a session at the meeting entitled Outside the Classroom, Beyond Fieldwork: Innovative Approaches to Informal Geoscience Education in Non-Traditional Settings with this description:

This session highlights informal education projects that combine innovative approaches to geoscience education with non-traditional settings and open unique opportunities to reach novel audiences.

I decided that my modest efforts to share my collections with both philatelic and geoscientific audiences, including this blog, could be the subject of a talk. So here is the Slides show of the resulting presentation that I will be making (still subject to edits) this coming Wednesday:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11uigQohlpkoor0E6n5_XLtwLmSy5SVKWfB4vNEo_xWQ/edit?usp=drive_link

Two sample slides are shown below.

IGY Bulletin, Number 8, February 1958 - A report on the United States Program

This IGY Bulletin article is a brief account of some activities in the U.S. IGY Program during its first five months (or about the first 1/4 of the 18-month IGY), from July 1 to Nov. 30, 1957. So it is effectively a review of things reported in the IGY Bulletin to date, some of which have been mentioned in previous posts. It is condensed from an article, "International Geophysical Year: A report on the United States Program," by Hugh Odishaw, Science, vol. 127. issue #3290, pp. 115-128, Jan. 17, 1958. I've mentioned Hugh Odishaw, executive director of the U.S. National Committee for the IGY, in a previous post. I own this press photo (stamped on the back  as UPI, 12/29/58) of him, taken at the end of the IGY.

You can download a pdf of Odishaw's article here. The backgrounds on some of the projects it describes have been provided in previous posts. Below I will bullet-point some of the highlights of the Bulletin’s 8-page article, using headings and subheadings from that article. 

Physics of the Upper Atmosphere

Solar activity

• The first major solar flare observed as part the IGY program was on 28 June 1957 (just before the official start of the IGY), leading to an Alert concerning the probability of solar disturbances.
• Measurements at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California found that the magnetic field at the sun's surface is about 10,000 times greater than that of the Earth.
• Magnetic observatories confirmed the existence of the equatorial electro-jet, a large but narrow electric current circling the Earth's equator high in the atmosphere.

Aurora and airglow

• The most complete synoptic maps ever of auroral displays were compiled, including the first confirmation that auroral displays at the north and south poles were synchronous.

Cosmic rays

• The "cosmic ray equator," where the cosmic ray intensity is a minimum, was found to deviate from the geomagnetic equator, perhaps due to cosmic ray deflections by extraterrestrial magnetic fields.
• With the first launch of an IGY test rocket on 5 July 1956 from Wallop's Island, Virginia, 83 rockets had been launched so far during the IGY, revealing atmospheric temperature, pressure, density, and ionization profiles.
• The launches of Sputniks 1 and 2 represented an extension of rockets' probing of the high atmosphere. 
• The U.S. was developing two types of satellites: test spheres for the testing of the Vanguard rocket system, and instrumented satellites to be later used with Vanguard and Jupiter-C rockets.

Earth's Heat and Water Regimen

Meteorology

• Synoptic meteorological maps of Antarctica were prepared for the first time, and continued on a daily basis.
• The South Pole Station, 10,000 feet above sea level, reported the lowest temperature ever recorded, -102.1 °F.
• Weather balloons were sent to altitudes of as much as 80,000 feet (15 miles) over Antarctica.
• Atmospheric ozone was measured in Antarctica for the first time, the beginning of a database that showed progressively decreasing levels of atmospheric ozone. In the 1980s, this depletion of ozone was attributed to the release of chlorofluorocarbon pollutants, garnering the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for  Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina, and F. Sherwood Rowland.

Ozone ground measurements (black circles) starting at the time of the IGY, and later measurements above Antarctica (NASA)

• Carbon dioxide, "another minor constituent of the atmosphere which may play a role in climatic changes," was also measured in Antarctica. A summary of early analyses of carbon dioxide in Antarctic air collected in glass flasks at the South Pole between 17 May 1957 and 6 February 1976 
  were reported and tabulated in the publication Antarctic Carbon Dioxide Project, Report No. 5 (July 15, 1976), prepared by Charles D. Keeling, J. Alexander Adams and Carl A. Ekdahl of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This level has continued to increase in Antarctica, as it has worldwide. I think we can safely remove the qualifier "may" from the quote above.

The earliest carbon dioxide measurements from Antarctica (Keeling et al., 1976)

Glaciology

• In Greenland, the U.S. Army's Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment perfected techniques for drilling holes in the ice with hollow drills to obtain ice cores. The first hole drilled in Greenland in 1956 reached a depth of over 1000'. The layers of ice provide a stratigraphy of climate, precipitation, and volcanism
• Seismic studies in Antarctica were used to ascertain thicknesses of the ice sheet. Byrd Station, at an elevation of 5000', sat atop ice almost 10,000' thick.
• Oceanographic expeditions were used among other reasons for studying mean sea level. No mention was made in the Bulletin article about the sea level rise that has been a result of global warming.

Rise in sea levels since 1900. Pre-1940, glaciers and Greenland meltwater dominated the rise; dam projects slowed the rise in the 1970s. Recently, ice sheet and glacier melt, plus thermal expansion, dominate the rise. Tide-gauge data shown in blue and satellite data in orange. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

• Geophysicists on Drifting Station A in the Arctic Ocean used seismic and gravity measurements to infer the floe had drifted over an underlying oceanic ridge which rose more than 5,000' above the ocean floor.

Earth's Structure and Interior

Seismology

• New earthquake seismographs were developed and deployed around the world, including ten long period seismographs that were especially able to detect surface waves with periods of 400 seconds, generated by only the very largest earthquakes. 
• Seismographs installed in the Pacific and Antarctic regions were to yield more complete patterns of global seismicity (which a decade later became critical for the theory of plate tectonics).
• Seismologists probed the thickened continental "roots" beneath the Andes Mountains of South America (a topic of isostasy to be blogged about at some point).
• The first successful gravity measurements were made on the open sea using a new model of gravimeter.

IGY Data

To handle the voluminous amount of data to be collected during the IGY at 2,000 stations by 10,000 scientists from 67 countries, three World Data Centers were to be established in the U.S., Europe, and the Soviet Union.

We can see that a number of strands of IGY research projects have endured, and have implications for critical issues that were barely considered at the time. That's how basic scientific research works, and why we must support it!

IGY Bulletin, Number 8, February 1958 - First sea surface gravimeter

We move on to the IGY Bulletin issue #8 from February, 1958. The download of this 20-page issue from the AGU website can be found here. The articles in this issue are:

1. First sea surface gravimeter
2. A report on the United States Program
3. Satellite telemetry
4. IGY satellite program notes
5. Thule neutron monitor station

Here I will summarize the first article. From an earlier post, gravity objectives of the IGY included:

• augmenting the global network of gravity measurements, especially in the Southern Hemisphere and polar regions
• better determination of the solid Earth's response to the tides
• enhanced measurement of gravity at sea

This article first reports on the first successful surface measurement of gravity in the open sea on Nov. 22, 1957, by J. Lamar Worzel of Lamont Geological Observatory, Columbia University. He used a Graf-Askania gravimeter developed at the Technical University of Munich by Anton Graf. The USS Compass Island provided a gyro-stabilized platform for this work.

In a basic physics course, we'd learn that the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface is 9.8 m/s². However, because of the shape of the Earth, gravity varies on a longitudinally-averaged Earth from 9.7803267714 m/s² at the equator to 9.8321863685 m/s² at the poles, 0.5% higher, because you are closer to the Earth's center at the poles of our squashed (oblate spheroid) Earth. Gravity is also affected by elevation, local terrain, tides, moving measurement platforms (such as ships), and mass anomalies in the subsurface. Gravity surveys in geophysics are often used, after correcting for the other factors that affect gravity, to infer the nature of anomalous masses in the subsurface. Signals as small as 0.00001 m/s² (or about 1 part in 1,000,000 of the Earth's gravity field) are measurable with sensitive gravity meters (gravimeters) and can indicate significant "gravity anomalies."

Early gravimeters used on land were precision pendulum systems, since the period of a pendulum swing is related to the acceleration of gravity. Measurements at sea present a special challenge due to lack of stability and the addition of non-gravitational accelerations caused by the motions of the ship. In the 1920s, the Dutch geophysicist Vening Meinesz developed a system of two and then three balanced pendulums that were able to measure gravity underneath the sea surface by nulling out movement in the relatively quiet environment of a submarine. The later Graf instrument was basically a very sensitive spring-type balance that was able to measure gravity on the noisier platform of a ship at the surface. A measurement with the Graf could be taken in 9 hours and the data reduced in half a day, compared to two days and two weeks, respectively, for a measurement with the old pendulum systems. Today, measurements with modern gravimeters take a matter of minutes.

Seaborne gravity measurements are important since the oceans cover about 3/4 of the Earth's surface. The measurements to be made during the IGY were to fill major gaps in the extant world gravity database, especially in the polar regions and at sea, and then to meld the different national surveys together into a global grid.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) issued a set of four se-tenant geophysics (but not IGY) stamps in 1980. The 20-pfennig stamp showed a modern gravimeter and how it might be used in delineating coal-bearing sedimentary basins. I just bought the block of stamps on eBay, from where the image below comes.

GDR block Scott #2146a, including the gravity stamp (Scott #2143), upper left

On my trip to Sarasota two weeks ago, I visited parks, the beach, played golf, ate good food, went to botanical gardens. I also perused the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (yes, the circus Ringling); I was not so keen on the old Italian art, but I liked the modern art, including this 1988 piece entitled Gravity, by Yuriko Yamaguchi:

And, on my last night, I went to the see a live performance at Circus Sarasota, including this gravity-defying balancing act by daughter-father team of Annaliese and Bello Nock.

What goes up, must come down, according to gravity!

Wave refraction, optical illusions, and the Titanic

One thing I like about physics is how the same math and physics principles can be used to understand a variety of different phenomena. In a recent post I briefly reviewed the use of refraction and reflection of seismic waves for learning about the layering of the sea floor. Other types of waves that can be refracted and reflected include sound waves, light (waves in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum), and other types of electromagnetic waves.

I came across two interesting articles in the last few days about wave phenomena that I wanted to mention. So let's call today's post just a little bit of (geo)physics, maybe because I am too lazy to dig into the next IGY Bulletin article.

The first article appeared Tuesday in The Guardian, one of three newspapers I look at every day and financially support. (The other two are the New York Times and the local Lancaster LNP.) The article was about a mysterious "iceberg" that appeared off the coast of Vancouver Island, a sighting that was surprising because it had not been otherwise noticed.

Simone Engels’s photograph of the apparent iceberg off the coast of Vancouver Island (The Guardian, 25 Jan. 2022)

The photographer Simone Engels was actually seeing the Cheam mountain range on the mainland of British Columbia, nearly 125 miles away, and below the horizon from where she was standing. This optical illusion was caused by what is known as a “superior mirage” which can occur when there is an atmospheric temperature inversion with a band of warm air resting on a layer of cold air. In such a situation, light rays from the source object are refracted (bent), projecting an image into the "wrong" position. The temperature boundary of the inversion represents a discontinuity in terms of light velocity, so the light waves are bent and seen to be at ground level even though the object actually lies below the horizon. 

Superior mirage of the "phantom iceberg" (The Weather Network)

The Italian term for such a superior mirage is Fata Morgana, and this video also explains and shows how it works:

This is the opposite of an "inferior mirage." For example, when you drive on a hot day and see mirage “puddles” on the pavement, that’s basically a repeated image of the sky that’s bent into a visible spot on the ground.

An article in the Smithsonian Magazine from 2012 that I came across described the hypothesis that a superior mirage led to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the more than 1500 deaths that resulted. According to this idea, a thermal inversion and corresponding optical distortion camouflaged the presence of the looming iceberg to those on the Titanic until it was too late, and then distorted the distress signals that the Titanic sent out to the nearby freighter Californian after it was hit.

As for a stamp that shows seismic reflection and refraction, the former German Democratic Republic (aka GDR, East Germany, or Deutsche Demokratische Republik -- DDR -- auf Deutsch) issued a set of four geophysics stamps in 1980. These stamps are what philatelists call "se-tenant": two or more stamps of different colors, designs or values that are printed adjacent to each other on one sheet. (The American and Swedish sets on stamp collecting showed in my recent posts were also se-tenant.) The German 35-pfennig (pre-Euro) stamp (Scott #2145) shows seismic waves that are both reflected and refracted by layers in the geologic subsurface, used for reconnaissance exploration of oil and natural gas deposits.

Cover from my collection showing GDR Scott block #2146a, including stamps #2143-2146, on the topic of geophysical exploration

IGY Bulletin, Number 3, September 1957 - Solar Activity Program; Cosmic Ray Program

These two IGY Bulletin articles elaborate on two related programs covering the different IGY sub-disciplines. 

Solar Activity Program

I have already posted a bit on the variation of solar activity during a solar cycle and on solar storms. The Bulletin article on the Solar Activity Program starts by noting that variations of the sun's activity had been recognized since shortly after the invention of the telescope in the early 1600s, when Galileo developed an improved telescope to enable him to discover and sketch sunspots.

For the IGY, principal goals for this program included warnings of expected geophysical effects of solar activity on terrestrial phenomena, and collecting comprehensive physical measurements of all measurable solar phenomena. Ten solar observatories in the U.S. were focused on these goals.

Solar flares were among the ten or so solar phenomena affecting the Earth that were observed. Observations at intervals of three minutes or less were taken at several stations, including the Mount Wilson Observatory (California) and the Sacramento Peak Sunspot Solar Observatory (actually located in Sunspot, New Mexico) which still exist. Today I purchased a cover postmarked from the location of the Sunspot Observatory, in Sunset, NM, on March 22, 1983 (25 years after the IGY), the date of launch of STS-3, the third mission for the Space Shuttle Columbia. It turned out that this shuttle was forced to land eight days later at White Sands, NM (only 50 miles southwest of Sacramento Peak), the only shuttle to do so, due to flooding at its originally planned landing site, Edwards Air Force Base.

My new cover (US 224) postmarked from Sunspot, NM, on launch date of the Space Shuttle (eBay image of the cover)

Among other solar measurements to be made, the Mount Wilson and Palomar Mountain Observatories were to map out the magnetic field of the solar disk on a daily basis using the Zeeman effect, whereby a magnetic fields splits spectral lines of the solar light emissions. Pieter Zeeman won the Nobel Prize in 1902 for discovering this effect. 

Cosmic Ray Program

The second article in this issue of IGY Bulletin is on the Cosmic Ray Program. Cosmic rays are actually highly energetic particles originating in space, from supernovas in other galaxies, and from our Sun. In a process called spallation, primary cosmic rays interact with molecules in Earth's atmosphere to produce a variety of secondary cosmic rays, i.e., different kinds of particles. These various particles  require different methods to indirectly detect cosmic rays via their by-products.

By-products of cosmic rays interacting with air molecules

The Bulletin article states that a number of projects (outlined in more detail than you would want to know) were to continuously measure cosmic ray intensity via secondary neutrons and mesons (i.e., pions/p-mesons and kaons/k-mesons) at the ground surface and also at elevations using balloons. These would enable the determination of cosmic ray particles' composition, masses, charges, and their changes over time. Measurements at different latitudes were made to consider the relation between the latitudinally variable geomagnetic field and cosmic ray intensities.

Among the scientific investigators mentioned in the article is S.F. Singer, then at the University of Maryland (my father had a barber shop in College Park at that time, a couple of miles from where we lived, so maybe he cut Singer's hair). Singer was present at a 1950 dinner party hosted by James Van Allen where the idea for the IGY was first hatched. He later became known as Fred Singer, a science contrarian (which I think is a generous term)  "who sought to denigrate other scientists who warned the public about secondhand smoke, greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain and the dangers of a steadily warming climate" (Washington Post).

My personal research connection with cosmic rays occurred in graduate school, when I was a research assistant with Dr. Paul Damon, one of the great mentors of my life. Among Paul's many interests was radiocarbon geophysics and the calibration of the radiocarbon timescale. Radiocarbon (i.e., radioactive carbon), aka carbon-14, is a radioactive isotope of carbon produced in our atmosphere as a spallation product of the interaction of cosmic rays with nitrogen, the most abundant element in our atmosphere. As the Earth's magnetic field changes strength over time (fodder for a future post), cosmic ray fluxes into the atmosphere change as well since charged cosmic ray particles are affected by magnetic fields. This changes the rate of radiocarbon production (e.g., Damon and Sternberg, 1989), which in turn affects carbon-14 dating; this means that carbon-14 dates have to be corrected for this effect.

To close, here is a contemporary tutorial and update on cosmic rays from Dr. Veronica Bindi, physics professor at the University of Hawaii:

IGY Bulletin, Number 2, August 1957 - CSAGI and the International Geophysical Year

Ok, just this and one more short article to review from this second issue of the IGY Bulletin.

Remember that the words after the dash in the title of this post is the name of the article I am summarizing. So what is CSAGI? CSAGI is the acronym for Comité Spécial de l'Anée Géophysique Internationale, French for The Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year. This group was formed by the International Council for Scientific Unions (ICSU) to develop and coordinate the IGY. CSAGI met for the first time in October, 1952, almost 5 years before the start of the IGY, and organized a number of meetings after that to coordinate the various national committees working on the different subdisciplines of the IGY.

The officers of CSAGI were the following:

Sydney Chapman, President - bio

Lloyd V. Berkner, Vice President - bio

Marcel Nicolet, Secretary-General - bio

V. V. Beloussov - bio

Jean Coulomb - bio

I recently purchased an IGY first day cover signed by Sydney Chapman, one of the most accomplished geophysicists of the 20th century and a primary driving forces behind the IGY. This was one of my more expensive covers, but I had been searching for one signed by him so considered myself fortunate to find it.

US #215 in my IGY FDC collection

I don't think too much about possible forgeries in the philatelic items I buy, but one has to at leas contemplate that for more expensive items. Fortunately, Chapman's signature came with a certificate of authenticity, which I have chosen to trust.

The article also lists representatives to CSAGI from eight major international scientific societies, and reporters for each of the major geophysical subdisciplines covered by the IGY.

The article announced that Pergamon Press would be publishing 4-6 volumes of the Annals of the International Geophysical Year in 1957 and 1958, constituting a central record of IGY activity, proceedings, and technical manuals. Eventually, as best I can tell, 48 volumes were published from 1959-1970. One archive of the Annals is at the American Philosophical Society library in Philadelphia, only a train ride away for me, so before long I'll have to go have a look.

The Bulletin article also outlines the formation of the World Data Centers, organized to collate the data collected during the IGY from over 2000 stations by 10,000 scientists from over 60 countries. At the time, World Data Center A was the responsibility of the U.S., World Data Center B was set up in the Soviet Union, and World Data Center C was dispersed through Western Europe and the Pacific. The World Data Centers still exist today, as the World Data System.

Since the IGY, the ICSU has evolved into the International Science Council (ISC), created in 2018 after the merger of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC). It is the only international non-governmental organization bringing together over 200 natural and social science unions along with national organizations, and the largest global science organization of its type. The IGY was exemplary in showing the way towards greater international scientific cooperation.

A final section of this IGY Bulletin article discusses plans for the USSR Rocket and Satellite Program during the IGY, which was submitted as a document to CSAGI. A total of 125 rocket launches for scientific measurements were projected. Satellite launches were expected, but no indication was given as to the number of satellites planned nor their launch dates. Just wait until October!

IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Status report: seismology, gravity and longitude & latitude

This was the first of three articles in the IGY Bulletins that will present the status of activity in each IGY area. Recall that from my post of Nov. 21, 2020, these areas are:

1. World Days and communications
2. meteorology
3. geomagnetism
4. aurora and airglow
5. ionosphere
6. solar activity
7. cosmic rays
8. longitudes and latitudes
9. glaciology
10. oceanography
11. rockets and satellites
12. seismology
13. gravity
14. nuclear radiation

For the three areas covered in this IGY Bulletin article, what were some of the IGY goals? I'll number these areas according to the list above.

8. Longitudes and latitudes objectives included:

• precise determination of latitudes and longitudes, to within a few feet
• determination of the shape (figure) of the Earth
• measurement of irregularities in Earth's rotation 

12. Seismology objectives included determination of:

• Antarctic crustal structure
• Antarctic ice thickness
• layers and their thicknesses in the ocean crust

13. Gravity objectives included:

• augmenting the global network of gravity measurements, especially in the Southern Hemisphere and polar regions
• better determination of the solid Earth's response to the tides
• enhanced measurement of gravity at sea

I assume we will see results of these pursuits in future issues of the IGY Bulletin, to be summarized here in future posts.

In my geophysics courses at Franklin & Marshall College, I taught all three of the topics that are the subject of this Bulletin article. Geophysicists often distinguishes between "pure" and "applied" geophysics. Pure geophysics (aka physics of the Earth, or solid Earth geophysics) is more or less the physics of the Earth in its natural state, including earthquake seismology, geomagnetism, and the gravity field of the Earth. Applied geophysics involves surveys (e.g., seismic, gravity, magnetic, electrical), using natural or artificial energy sources, to locate things in the Earth's subsurface of economic or cultural interest such as hydrocarbons, ores, and archaeological structures. 

As our geosciences curriculum at F&M changed over the years, I taught separate courses on solid Earth geophysics and applied geophysics, and courses that somewhat combined these topics, I can count 9 or 10 textbooks on my bookshelf that I used for these courses. I probably changed them more than was necessary, but I was constantly trying to find that "better" (also in print, up to date, and not too expensive) guide for undergraduates who typically had more interest in geology than geophysics, and often came in with only modest quantitative skills. 

Below are the covers of my favorite three of the textbooks. A common thread is that they are all explicitly written for geologists, without too much calculus, and more compatible with the students I taught.

Geophysics in the news - a solar coronal mass ejection

I happened to run into this geophysical story in the news today.

NASA's Solar Orbiter launched on February 10, 2020, and is currently in the cruise phase ahead of the main science mission, which begins in November of this year. This mission has already detected and tracked the evolution of a coronal mass ejection (CME) on February 12-13, 2021. CMEs are eruptions of particles from the solar atmosphere that blast out into the Solar System, and are responsible for space weather phenomena in the near-Earth environment. Understanding the sun and its relationship to the Earth was one of the major areas of study during the IGY.

CMEs, first identified as such in 1971, are often related to solar flares and prominences, such as shown on the U.S. IGY stamp (see the cover image below).

Here is a beautiful simulation of a CME interacting with the Earth's magnetosphere.

One of the most impressive solar storms in history was the 1859 Carrington event, since identified as a CME. This was almost 100 years before the IGY. The storm caused strong auroral displays and wrought havoc with telegraph systems. A solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts, and extended outages of the electrical grid. So knowledge about extreme solar events has useful technological implications.

Currently we are just past the solar minimum between solar cycles 24 and 25. During solar minima, CMEs are less frequent, but still occur.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression

I mentioned the International Year of the Quiet Sun (IQSY) in my post of Feb. 22. That year of scientific study around solar minimum complemented the solar research during the IGY and a solar maximum. 

My IGY philately colleague Bob Greenwald recently alerted me to the solar science Forever stamp series that will be issued this year.  If you click on and enlarge the image below, you'll notice the stamps showing coronal holes and coronal loops.

U.S. sun science Forever stamps to be issued in 2021

Below is a 1964 cover, produced by the Rocket Research Institute, from my collection (US 169, my index #). One stamp is the 3¢ 1958 IGY stamp. The other 5¢ 1963 stamp is US #1237, comemmorating the centennial of the founding of the National Academy of Sciences. The cover honors the 5th anniversary of the IGY, and the contemporaneous IQSY. The postage of 8¢ was the airmail rate from 1963-1968. The cachet includes logos for both the IGY and the IQSY. The insert is a graphic of John C. Fremont's encampment on Pyramid Lake (near Reno, the city where the stamp was postmarked), over which the rocket carrying this cover was flown.

IGY-IQSY cover (1964), front

IGY-IQSY cover, back

IGY-IQSY cover, insert

Elon Musk - rocket mail?

Sonification of geophysical data

On NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday (NPR is a favorite news source in our household), there was a story about the The Music of the Northern Lights. Composer Matthew Burtner created a piece of music called Auroras by recording very low frequency emissions of aurorae (4th area of study for the IGY) and transforming them into audio.

This is an example of sonification, the process of turning non-aural information into sound. Below, I'll present several examples of how different types of geophysical data have been turned into audible sounds.

My favorite example of geophysical sonification is a composition by Charles Dodge. His 1970 piece Earth's Magnetic Field is based on note-keeping methods for so-called Kp indices, which represent short-term changes in the global magnetic field (3rd area of study for the IGY), which can be transposed into musical notation.

I bought this on vinyl in the mid-1970s at my favorite record store in Tucson when I was in graduate school. I still have it:

Charles Dodge, Earth's Magnetic Field (1970), front album cover

Charles Dodge, Earth's Magnetic Field (1970), back album cover

Charles Dodge, Earth's Magnetic Field (1970), Side A

You can listen to Side A of the record here:

                                    

I scanned the liner notes for the album (vinyl! albums! liner notes!) which give a nice description of how this piece was produced. Rather than inserting those lengthy comments in the blog, I posted them here. I could not find these anywhere else online. 

NASA has posted a sonification of vibrations of the sun here. Solar activity is the 6th area of study for the IGY.

The catalog for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (usually for folk music) includes a 1955 recording, Ionosphere. This effort was a product of Cook Laboratories, run by renowned audio engineer Emory Cook. The ionosphere was the 5th area of study for the IGY.

The solid Earth makes sound as well. Pre-sonification, the Seismological Society of America (located a stone's throw from where my older son lives in El Cerrito, CA) posted a collection of 21 earthquake related sounds, prepared by Karl V. Steinbrugge, originally published in 1974 and updated with eight additional sounds in 1985. The collection was sold by the Society for many years, originally as an audio cassette tape which I once owned, but I think I discarded it after I retired. Here, for example, is the voice of a man rather excited by the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964.  

But seismic waves are very amenable to sonification. Ben Holtzman, a geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Geophysical Observatory, Columbia University, has co-produced audio and visual representations of seismic wave data, including a representation of the 2011 magnitude 9 (4th largest in history) Tohoku Earthquake. Sonification of other significant earthquakes (including the 2004 m=9.1 Sumatran quake, third largest in history) produced by this group can be found here. Seismology was the 12th area of study for the IGY, so 5 of those 14 areas of geophysical study are represented in this post.

You can find some other cool examples of geophysical sonification on your own.

There are also some popular songs that refer directly to the IGY, but that's another post.