Date

Dear Colleague,

At the IUGG General Assembly in Birmingham there will be two
symposia that will be of interest to anyone who is concerned with
the interactions between ice sheets, oceans, sea level, and the
geodetic effects of the associated mass shifts.

The symposia will each be 1 1/2 days long. Together they will fill
the 3-day period 21-23 July; it is not yet certain which symposium
will come first. The deadline for abstracts is 15 January.

More information on the IUGG General Assembly can be found on the
IUGG99 Homepage: http://www.bham.ac.uk/IUGG99/

There could easily be some uncertainty about which symposium to
submit a particular paper to. My suggestion is this -- any paper that
involves glaciers or ice sheets should go to JSH12. In case of doubt
about other papers, I recommend discussing the matter with Dick
Peltier, who has agreed to act as the negotiator between the two
sessions. His email address is peltier [at] atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca.

Here are brief summaries of the two symposia (from the IUGG 2nd
Circular):

JSG11: SEA-LEVEL CHANGES AND VERTICAL GROUND MOVEMENTS

Mon itoring of sea-level changes and understanding the physical
causes of them are key for revealing ongoing climate variabilities
and, eventually, for mitigating the natural hazard due to sea-level
increase. The issues touched upon in sea-level studies represent a
really interdisciplinary field where geodesy, solid Earth geophysics
and oceanography provide the necessary tools to study the pattern of
global ocean circulation and to discriminate sea-level changes due
to climate variabilities or ocean dynamics from those due to
vertical ground movements due to slow deformation processes
within the Earth's mantle and active tectonics. All contributions
from the different fields, at global and regional scales, that shed
light onto this topic are welcome.

Convenor
Roberto Sabadini
Univarsita degli Studi, Milano, Italy,
Tel: +39 2 23498407
Email: bob [at] sabadini.geofisica.unimi.it

Co-convenors
Hermann Drewes
Deutsches Geodetisches Forschungsinstitut
Theoretische Geodesie
Germany

Philip L Woodworth
Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory
United Kingdom

JSH12: ICE SHEETS, OCEANS, AND THE EARTH'S SHAPE: MODERN
PERSPECTIVES ON SEA-LEVEL CHANGE

Throughout the last million years Earth history, the planet has
experienced a regular cycle of glaciation and deglaciation. The
redistribution of surface mass between cryosphere and oceans that
characterizes this cycle has a profound impact upon relative-sea-
level history, earth rotation, and the climate state itself.
Understanding of the physical processes that have controlled the
stability of the cryosphere in the past provides essential
information that is required to appreciate how it may respond to
future global warming. It is expected that ongoing climate change
may lead to an important response in mean sea level, either through
a direct affect on cryospheric volume, involving both small ice caps
and glaciers and large continental ice sheets, or due to ocean
thermal expansion (or both). Approaches that may be brought to bear
to answer these questions concerning the issue of sea-level rise are
manifold. The proposed symposium would seek to attract papers on
all aspects of sea-level change, past, present, and future. Papers on
measurements, theoretical analyses, and numerical modeling would
all be welcome.

Convenor Co-convenors

Charles R Bentley W Richard Peltier
Geophysical and Polar Research Center Dept of Physics
University of Wisconsin University of Toronto
1215 West Dayton Street 60 St. George Street
Madison, WI 53706, USA Toronto, Ontario
CANADA, M5S 1A7
Tel: 1 608 262-1922 Tel (416)-978-2938
FAX: 1 608 262-0693 Fax (416)-978-8905
bentley [at] geology.wisc.edu peltier [at] atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca

                                   Atsumu Ohmura
                                   Institute of Geography
                                   Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
                                   Winterthurerstrasse 190
                                   CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
                                   Tel:+41 1 635 5220
                                   Fax:+41 1 362 5197
                                   Tel at home:+41 1 921 1497
                                   ohmura [at] geo.umnw.ethz.ch

Sincerely yours,

Charlie Bentley

A. P. Crary Professor Emeritus of Geophysics
Geophysical and Polar Research Center
University of Wisconsin
1215 West Dayton Street
Madison, WI 53706, USA
Tel: 1 608 262-1922
Fax: 1 608 262-0693
bentley [at] geology.wisc.edu