Polar Outreach Catalogue

Many different scientific groups will be involved in IPY activities. Besides commonly agreed data management and policy guidelines, harmonized basic scientific classifications and glossaries are required to guarantee a successful outlive of IPY. Cryospheric glossaries and to some extent classifications are widespread. Unfortunately, many stem from individual efforts, are of diverse content and most lack approval by the scientific community. A common basic cryospheric classification approved by a large scientific community will allow communicating IPY results to the scientific community by avoiding misunderstanding as well as repeated unnecessary and redundant definitions. UCCS, formerly known as the International Commission on Snow and Ice, ICSI, provides the necessarily neutral but international scientific platform for such a task. UCCS will install a Working Group on Ice-Snow Classification and Glossary. The WG will approach all IPY activity leaders and other eminent specialists in the respective fields to gather contributions for an Ice and Snow classification and corresponding glossaries. These contributions will be reviewed and assessed by independent peers. For this review task, UCCS will count on a worldwide network of representatives from both traditional and non-traditional polar countries. The Ice and Snow classification and glossaries will be made available to the scientific community both as hard copies and as electronic versions. Hard copies of core documents (in English) are anticipated to be published with the help of UNESCO or other organisations such as the World Data Centres, while electronic versions of complete and possibly multilingual versions will be downloadable from the UCCS web site (www.cryosphericsciences.org).