Memorandum 32
Submission from A P Van Eyken, Director,
EISCAT Scientific Association
I presently have the honour to be the Director
of the EISCAT International Scientific Association, the World's
leading upper atmosphere research radar institution, and an international
partnership in which the United Kingdom plays a major role. In
spite of my name, I am also a born and raised UK citizen. While
the contents of the recently published Science and Technology
Facilities Council (STFC) Delivery Plan distress me greatly in
both capacities, I understand that the Chairman of the international
EISCAT Council will express the Association's views and I write
here primarily as a concerned, and saddened, UK citizen.
The United Kingdom's scientific community are
world leaders in the development and exploitation of radar for
atmospheric research. In particular, the UK has led the way in
the exploitation of the EISCAT radars and together we have achieved
a great deal of excellent science that is also of direct benefit
to humankind.
I would like to emphasise the implications of
the UK withdrawal from all ground-based Solar Terrestrial Physics
(STP) which was announced—seemingly with no warning or consultation
whatsoever—in the first Delivery Plan to be issued by STFC
last week.
EISCAT is an international consortium of the
UK, China, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan, and Germany and provides
a number of radars and other facilities in northern Scandinavia
and on the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic. The research we
carry out in the STP area is applicable to many areas but is of
direct and immediate benefit to the forecasting of the geo-effectiveness
of Earth-bound disturbances generated by the Sun (which can effect,
and damage, a huge range of technological systems from cell-phones
to the electrical supply grid), the design and operation of satellites
in the hostile environment of space, the efficient operation of
communication and navigation systems (including both one- and
two-frequency GPS/Galileo positioning systems), satellite debris
and space environment monitoring, satellite orbit prediction,
the development of oil and mineral exploration radar, not to mention
a variety of military applications.
In the UK, EISCAT participation had been funded
through "blue skies" research councils starting in the
days of the Science Research Council (SRC) and progressing through
the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) to the Particle
Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), where the direct
economic, military and wealth-creation benefits of the research
were not major factors in the decision making. Nevertheless, two
years ago the UK EISCAT community submitted an excellent science
case supporting their continued involvement. This case dealt with,
inter-alia, fundamental plasma physics, upper atmosphere cooling
(caused by global warming), solar control of near-Earth space,
upper-middle-lower atmosphere coupling and studies of the solar
system condensation using EISCAT's unique capabilities for micrometeorite
studies. Indeed, PPARC's Science Committee agreed and signed up
to the rolling 5-year membership commitment, a decision reinforced
by STFC's early actions in steering UK groundbased STP interests
towards specific exploitation of UK's access to the EISCAT facilities
which are, as noted above, the finest such resources in the World.
Given that the research carried out with EISCAT
has so many immediate applications, we very much welcomed STFC
as a new research Council with a broader remit to cover the economic
benefits of our research. However, instead of supporting solar-terrestrial
physics as an outstanding example of marrying world-leading research
with technical benefits to society as a whole, STFC has singled
out this field of research to be cut. The impression given is
that this delivery plan is very poorly thought out, hurriedly
written and that it targets ground-based STP just to pad out the
list of savings. However, it is a tiny saving compared to that
required and yet, by completely abandoning this entire field,
does incalculable damage to the nation's support for its space
industry. The Chief Executive is on record as saying that the
cut was decided upon two years ago, in the programmatic review,
but that they only decided to implement it now. Firstly, EISCAT-related
STP was specifically not deprecated in that programmatic review,
and, secondly, that was a review conducted under quite different
circumstances by PPARC. Surely it has not been forgotten that
the new research council has a different remit? It is not at all
clear that any changes have been made to the STFC interpretation
of the programmatic review to ensure that the economic impact
of projects like EISCAT are genuinely given more weight than they
were in the PPARC regime; indeed, the whole procedure seems to
have been rather opaque.
Finally, I would like to make some comment on
the reputation of the UK, its scientific community, and their
trustworthiness in international collaborations. The prospect
of the UK belonging, for several more years, to an international
association, namely EISCAT, which it does not then exploit, is
very damaging to its credibility as a competent research nation.
That the UK would not honour its commitment, thus also destroying
its reputation as a trustworthy partner for international collaboration,
is presumably quite unthinkable. Driven by the requirements to
address currently identified major science issues, and with strong
backing from the EU, EISCAT is moving forward towards a new generation
of radars which will be invaluable not just in space weather activities
but also in studies of solar system formation and it painful for
me, as a UK scientist, to imagine that all this could take place
without our participation and without benefiting UK society in
any way.
When STFC first cut back resources for UK ground-based
STP, the Chairman of the EISCAT Council wrote to the STFC Chief
Executive deploring the situation, but never received any response.
I am therefore distributing this letter more widely, and by email
in the interests of speed, in the hope that it may at least be
read in some quarters before being consigned to the rubbish bin
along with the fine and unrivalled reputation of UK atmospheric
physics research.
December 2007
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