************************************************************************ IERS Message No. 350 February 08, 2018 ************************************************************************ News from IERS and BIPM Dear IERS users, During the past few months, several additions and updates have been made to the central IERS website www.iers.org. We would also like to report on other changes in IERS and at BIPM. 1. IERS Annual Report 2016 On 18 December 2017, the IERS Annual Report 2016 was published online at http://www.iers.org/AR2016 . It may be downloaded as a complete document or by chapters. 2. New homepage of the IERS Global Geophysical Fluids Centre Jean-Paul Boy, head of the IERS GGFC since 2016, has established a new GGFC homepage at University of Strasbourg: http://loading.u-strasbg.fr/GGFC/ 3. IERS Plot Tool with interactive plots It is possible now to create interactive plots with the IERS Plot Tool: https://www.iers.org/IERS/EN/DataProducts/tools/plot_tool/plot_tool.html 4. Additions to the IERS list of acronyms In December 2017, several additions and updates were introduced to the IERS list of acronyms at https://www.iers.org/Acronyms . 5. Changes in IERS personnel The IVS Directing Board at its meeting on October 12, 2017, decided that Wang Guangli of Shanghai Astronomical Observatory will be the second IVS Representative on the IERS Directing Board (DB). He replaced Chopo Ma who relinquished this position at the end of September 2017. At the moment of his retirement, Chopo Ma was the IERS DB member with the longest service for IERS in various positions: Head of the VLBI Coordinating Centre and VLBI Coordinating Centre Representative to the DB (1996-2000), IVS Representative to the DB and IERS Representative to the IVS DB (2001-2017), Chair of the IERS DB (2005-2012), Chair of the IERS/IVS Working Group on the Second Realization of the ICRF (2007-2014), IERS Representative to the IDS Governing Board (2009-2012), IERS Representative to IAG Commission 1 (Reference Frames) Steering Committee (2011-2016), and IERS Representative to the GGOS Consortium (2011-2014). Also in October 2017, the IERS DB elected Ruediger Haas as the new IERS representative to the IVS Directing Board, replacing Chopo Ma. The GGOS Coordinating Board at its meeting on November 2, 2017 approved the nomination of Richard Gross as the next representative of GGOS to the IERS DB. He replaced Bernd Richter, who had been the GGOS representative to IERS since 2012. All these changes have been reflected in the corresponding organizational web pages, in http://www.iers.org/DB and also in various pages in http://www.iers.org/History . 6. New Director of the BIPM Time Department Dr Patrizia Tavella, INRIM (Italy) has been appointed as the Director of the BIPM Time Department on 1 December 2017. She replaced Dr Elisa Felicitas Arias, who retired in 2017. More information: https://www.bipm.org/en/news/full-stories/2017-07-new-directors.html The BIPM Time Department interacts with the IERS to generate the time scale UTC which consists of TAI (from BIPM) and leap seconds (from IERS). Both organizations have also been working together on IERS Conventions. Kind regards, IERS Central Bureau ************************************************************************ IERS Messages are edited and distributed by the IERS Central Bureau. If not stated otherwise, the IERS is only the distributor of the message and is not responsible for its content. To submit texts for distribution and to subscribe or unsubscribe, please write to . Archives: http://www.iers.org/Messages/ ************************************************************************