Second International Polar Year
The International Meteorological Organization (the
predecessor to the World Meteorological Organization) proposed and promoted the
second International Polar Year (1932-1933) as an effort to investigate the
global implications of the newly discovered jet stream. The suggestion for this
originated from dr. J. Georgi at a meeting in Hamburg on 23 November 1927. The
proposal was referred to the International Meteorological Committee (nowadays
WMO Executive Committee) president dr. Ewoud van Everdingen (1873-1955).
The reasons for asking IMO to organize a second IPY
were that the first IPY was decided by the IMO congress in Rome (1879), one of
the principal items of IPY was meteorological observations and the fact that by
that time in many countries geomagnetic observations became the work of
national meteorological services.
A special commission was set up to prepare a proposal
for the IMO Conference of Directors in Copenhagen. This was approved in
September 1929 and three months later Van Everdingen could send an 'Outline of
the scheme for a Second Polar Year' to all meteorological services and
governments. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and the
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) joined in.
At the first
session of the Commission for the Polar Year in Leningrad, August 1930, it was
decided that IPY should begin on 1 August 1932 and last for 13 months (the same
time as the first IPY in 1882-1883). Some 40 nations participated in the second
IPY, which heralded advances in meteorology, atmospheric sciences,
geomagnetism, and the 'mapping' of ionospheric phenomena that advanced radio
science and technology. Forty permanent observation stations were established
in the Arctic, creating a step function expansion in ongoing scientific Arctic
research.
The contribution of the United States to IPY also
included more stations in the Arctic. In Antarctica the United States
contribution was the second Byrd Antarctic expedition, which established a
winter-long meteorological station approximately 175 km south of Little America
Station on the Ross Ice Shelf at the southern end of Roosevelt Island. This was
the first research station inland from Antarctica’s coast.
The contribution of the Netherlands consisted, among
others, of aerological observations on Iceland. A number of Fokker D-VII
aircraft were sent to Reykjavik. They made 330 flights in 261 days. In 313
flights a height of 5000 m was exceeded. In Angmagssalik on the
East-Greenlandic coast research was conducted into geomagnetism. The later
Nobel Prize winner Niko Tinbergen (brother of Nobel economist Jan Tinbergen)
travelled with the Dutch expedition to Angmagssalik to research the ecology and
ethology of polar birds. The photo shows the members of the second
international polar expedition 1932-1933 (photo: KNMI/Polygoon).
Catalogue
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 26 August 1932
UNOstamps subject page 24
last revised: 4 September 2010