Tag: Pasterze

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Automatic weather Station Pasterze

The automatic weather station (AWS) was built up in October 2012 on Pasterze Glacier. The following measurements were recorded on this site: air temperature at two different levels, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, snow height and radiation balance between incoming short-wave and long-wave versus surface reflected short-wave and outgoing long-wave radiation.
The data is collected with a solar powered datalogger and stored to a CF-card every 10 minutes. The radiation measurements are stored every minute. The data is collected automatically to a database.
The station is set as a “floating” station on a quadpod standing on the ice. Since July 2015 an automatic ablation sensor was added to the station.
As there is only 1 to 1.5 m snow during winter season the maintenance of the station is more easy than the stations at Sonnblick.
During winter there is no access to the station. The Großglockner Hochalpenstraße is closed from beginning of November to end of April and the route to the AWS is quite unsafe due to risk of avalanches.

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Field trip to Pasterze by TGM and ZAMG

After some attempts in previous years, again we agreed on a date and finally the weather was perfect for a joint field trip to Pasterze in October 2017. We – glaciologists from ZAMG + students and teachers from TGM made a joint field trip to Pasterze to make some experiments on WLAN data transmission in the real world and to get a feeling about the ongoing glacier retreat, and travelling safe and working on a glacier that big as Pasterze.

The path down to the glacier during nice weather in mid October 2017.
Passing the glacier front position from 2000.
in 5 minutes of walk we pass 5 years of glacier recession: The glacier front position from 2005.
Again some minutes later, we pass the front position of 2010. This was the front position only 7 years ago!
Hiking the canyon, that has formed on the orographic left side of the glacier snout.
Walking on the glacier snout on Pasterze.
Ice wall at the orographic left side of the glacier snout.
Close-up view of the ice debris at the base of the ice wall.
Icebergs in the proglacial lake of Pasterze.
We gaze at icebergs in Austria!
On our second day we even climbed up to visit the automatic camera on Freiwandeck.
The climb to the Automatic camera on Freiwandeck was steep and challenging!
And the view down to Großglockner Hochalpenstraße was nearly vertical at some points!
Nice colours and formations at the sediment deposits below the glacier.