Desarrollo de la Antártica

EL DESARROLLO DE LA ANTARTlCA § 2. THE INTERNATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL YEAR (IGY) The International Geophysícal Year (IGY) programs were proposed in the 'futernational Council of Scientific Union (ICSU) in 1952 to be an extended "Tthird International Polar Year" (IPY). Botn the First TPY (1882-83) and the Second IPY (1932-33) were planned and implemented in order to make óScientific observations of polar natu.– ral phenomena as much as in detail simultaneously with coordinated similar observations in other temperate regions on the earth's sur– face. At the occasion of first iPY (1882-83), the research efforts of world scientists were concentrated mostly to the geophysícal researches of the Arctic region. Only an IPY devoti.ng research program was carried Out by K. Schrader's wintering team (Germany) OIli SoutJh Georgia Island. The Second IPY (1932-,33) program also met a similar situa– tion; namely, the global observation networks were set up mostly in the northern hemisphere including the North polar regían, and no specific effort for the coordinated observation was made in tJhis pe– riod in the Antarctic. Because the coordinated observati\)nal researohes during the second IPY resulted in a remarkable progress in unders– tanding the northern polar phenomena in a semi-global scale, in particular with respect to the atmospheric phenomena, a genuine global scale observation program was required for IGY in order to aohieve a suffícient scientific understanding of various natural pheno– mena over our globe including botth the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It means that tJhe observation network in the Antarctic should be in the same level as in the Arctic in the IGY programs. A1though the time interval between the first and t,he second IPYS was 50 years, it seems that the time interval is too long to apply for the third polar year which is identical to IGY, because the requirement for reliable knowledge of the ¡global aspect of the eart:h's various phenomena is becoming very urgent for the modern life of mankind and the progress in sdence and technology is so rapid on tthese days. Owing to these drcumstances, the programs of IGY were planned to start in 1957, 125 years after the second IPY. The IGY period thus pro– posed was one year and a haH starting on July 1, 1957 and termina– ting on December 31, 1958. A spedal committee to coordinate and promote tthe !GY programs was set up in lesU in 1952, and it was na– med Comité Specia1e de l'Anné Geophysique Internationale (CSAGI). The scientific disciplines for the IGY planned by CSAGI are 'solar physics', airglow and aurora physies', 'ionosphere', 'geomagnetism',