A multidisciplinary field experiment to study scavenging processes

A multidisciplinary field experiment to study wet deposition processes by means of detailed case studies is presented with the help of a video. The field experiment, taking place along the slope of Mount Rigi, Central Switzerland, since 1984 (see Fig. 1 below), combines measurements of radar meteorology, cloud physics, aerosol physics, as well as of inorganic and organic chemistry. It unites researchers of both experimental and theoretical background. It is demonstrated that with the multifaceted data sets obtained many puzzling phenomena of the interaction between air pollutants and precipitation can be observed. State-of-the-art theories are found to be unable to explain many of the observations. Numerical models are so far insufficient to formulate adequate three-dimensional temporal evolutions of precipitating systems and its scavenging effects. Field experiments of this kind are therefore indispensable for a better understanding of the relative importance of the many known interactions, and they are a trigger for the search of still unknown scavenging pathways.