Articles | Volume 1, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-1-1-1994
https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-1-1-1994
31 Mar 1994
 | 31 Mar 1994

Editorial

A. K. Richter

Abstract. This is the first issue of a new scientific publication of the European Geophysical Society, which will serve as the official organ of the Section on Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics.

At the General Assembly in Strasbourg, 1987, this Section started with a special Joint Symposium on "Computer Simulations in Fluid Dynamics - Earth, Atmosphere and Space Plasmas" with 8 contributions. This was followed, a year later in Bologna, by a Joint Symposium entitled "Chaos and Turbulence in Geophysics" with 20 contributions. Since then the group of "nonlinear" scientists within the EGS has grown rapidly in size and in the quality of its contributions presented at the General Assemblies of the Society. Nowadays the programme of this Section normally includes 10 or more independent sessions with a total of some 250-300 papers. This development encouraged the officers and the members of the Section to search for a journal of their own, rather than to distribute their papers in the "classical" journals ranging from solid Earth geophysics to planetary and space sciences.

Originally, the Society was asked to join an already existing publication in the field of nonlinear sciences. After almost two years of negotiations with the editors and the publishers of the most accepted journals in the field, the Section members decided differently; namely to launch their own journal, preferentially with a well known European publisher. However, in view of the general decrease in financial support for science and the generally increasing overheads of the publishers, it was decided that the new journal should be published by the Society itself, as an independent publication owned and run only by the EGS.

The Society and the editors of this new journal are pleased to offer a modern, international, interdisciplinary and refereed publication to a young and growing generation of geophysicists with no page charges and fast publication on a "first come - first published" basis. The subscription rates are modest both for libraries and for members of the Society.

We hope that scientists from other disciplines will also enjoy reading this journal and that publishing in it will be rewarding for the authors.

With best wishes,

Dr. Arne K. Richter
Executive Secretary