Dust campaign in the Austrian Alps during 2024
To capture long-range tranported dust, several dust traps for wet and dry deposition and vertical flow have been installed in May 2024 at 3106 m asl, at the Sonnblick Observatory, in the Austrian Alps.
The traps were installed on 21 May and will be there until September 2024. The work belongs to the EU-INTERACT DUST-project, lead by Adjunct Professor Outi Meinander, vice-lead of the Thematic Network on High Latitude Dust, Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI).
The installation was carried out by the visiting team of Outi Meinander and Katja Bohm with the kind help of station personnel of Elke Ludewig and Hermann Scheer. During the visit, Outi also collected precipitation and snow samples, and prepared quartz filters for further laboratory analysis at FMI. At the time of the visit, the snow depth besides the Observatory at 3106 m was measured to be 120 cm. A Saharan dust layer within the snowpack could easily be observed. The host of the visit was the head of the Sonnblick Observatory, Dr. Elke Ludewig.