SCIENTIFIC GOALS AND EXPERIMENTS OF THE PROJECT WINTER PRECIPITATION AT MOUNT RIGI - AN OVERVIEW

Wet deposition plays an important role as a mechanism for cleansing of the polluted troposphere. Fluxes of pollutants from the atmosphere to earth's surface can affect soil and aquatic ecosystems. The investiga tion of the pollutant incorporation into wet deposition is therefore o f considerable interest for environmental research. The project ''Wint er precipitation at Mount Rigi'' addresses the processes determining t he chemical composition of wet deposition through an integrated approa ch considering atmospheric physical and chemical processes and their c omplex interactions. The investigated topics include: aerosol and gas scavenging, atmospheric chemistry (cloud water chemistry), cloud physi cs and dynamics. The design of the experiment, using three ground base d measuring stations at the northwestern slope of the mountain, and th e conceptual ideas using case study investigations are discussed.