News

On July 18th and 19th, scientists from the University of Vienna, TU Vienna, TROPOS and ZAMG met at the Sonnblick Observatory. The focus of the meeting was the development of the Austrian ACTRIS stations for aerosol in-situ observations (ACTRIS NF AIS) at the University of Vienna and at the Sonnblick Observatory. As part of the VINAR cooperation (https://vinar.univie.ac.at/), the data from these…

Due to the low rainfall in the 2021/2022 winter season, there was significantly less snow on the Sonnblick. In the summer of the previous year there was still enough snow for the winter season to start with a sufficient old snow cover. From January the snow depth increased only slowly. As a result, the Sonnblick was the winter season with the least amount of snow since records began. March,…

The extent to which the entire atmosphere is globally connected was shown by the last Saharan dust event on the Sonnblick. The desert sand deposits are clearly visible in the photos. A dark surface reflects less incoming solar radiation and thus heats up the surface more quickly. The change in albedo caused by the deposited Saharan dust causes the snow to melt.

In the summer months of 2021, a number of forest fires were registered in Europe. Areas in Italy, France, Greece and Turkey were hardest hit by large fires. In order to investigate the transport of carbon monoxide (CO) to the Sonnblick, the period 15.7. simulated with the WRF-Chem model including forest fire emissions from IS4FIRES (FMI) until August 31, 2021. No other emission sources and no…

The volcanic eruption on Tonga shows the sensitivity of the earth's atmosphere and the interconnectedness around the globe. On Saturday, its explosion could be heard several thousand kilometers away, including in Australia and New Zealand. Although no acoustic signal was heard in Austria, the arrival of the pressure wave could still be measured. The pressure wave reached us with a delay of…

The Sonnblick Observatory is pleased to welcome a new colleague to its ranks. After a long, exciting tender, the decision was made in favor of Simon Feigl. Mr. Feigl originally comes from Steyr and can already look back on a great deal of international experience. After studying technical physics at Graz University of Technology, a stay at the CERN research center in Geneva followed, in parallel…

This morning (05.11.21) the technicians at the Sonnblick Observatory were able to photograph an exciting light phenomenon. This phenomenon is a light column, which is counted to the halo phenomena. Starting from the sun you can see a beam of light. This effect is usually observed more in the northern regions, near the Arctic. In the past, such phenomena were often interpreted as something…

The results of the study by Dr. Dušan Materić brought exciting results which were carried out as part of the "Transnational Access Program" of the EU project INTERACT (supported by the EU Horizon 2020 project INTERACT, grant agreement No. 730938). The aim of the NIRA (Nanoplastics In Remote Air: types, concentrations and size distribution) measurement campaign is to detect…

The events of September 26th, 2021 show how sensitive the measuring devices are at the Sonnblick Observatory. An increased dust mass concentration was detected in the early hours of the night and morning. After verification of the data (trajectories, negative exponent of the single scattering albedo), this event is Saharan dust. This can be seen very clearly in the graphic (dust mass…

The Brewer spectrophotometer is a sophisticated optical instrument. It allows near-simultaneous observations of total ozone column (TOC) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) between the instrument and the sun. It can also make high-resolution spectral measurements of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the direct solar beam or across the entire sky. More than 25 years ago, the University of Natural Resources and…