Aerosol was continuously sampled by sucking ambient air with a flow rate of 120 m3/h through Whatman 541 filters (diameter 240 mm) using a ventilated electropolished stainless steel inlet stack (total height about 8 m above the snow surface) with a 50% aerodynamic cut-off diameter around 7-10 µm. Trace element analysis was performed by means of inductively coupled plasma - quadrupol mass spectrometry (ICP-QMS, ELAN 6000, Sciex/Perkin Elmer) equipped with a cross-flow nebulizer as sample introduction system. For trace element analyses we chose a total digestion of the samples with a pressurized digestion system (DAS 100, Picotrace) at 200°C in a mixture containing HNO3 (suprapure, 65%, Merck, sub-boiling bi-distilled), HF (suprapure, 40%, Merck, sub-boiling bi-distilled) and H2O2 (suprapure, 30%, Merck). With this device a series of 24 samples could be digested in parallel. Each series included one filter blank and a certified reference sample (NIST 1648 urban particulate matter). For calibration we used commercially available standard solutions (104 ppb multi-element verification standard 1 and 2, Perkin Elmer) which were generally applied in 1 ppb, 10 ppb, and 100 ppb concentrations (1 ppb corresponds to 1 ng of each element in 1 g solute). Each sample was spiked by 10 ppb Rh as internal standard to normalize the signal intensities and compensate instrumental sensitivity variations. We conservatively estimated the method detection limits (MDL) as three times the standard deviation (std) of the overall blank values. Values below the MDL are given as "< respecting MDL value" (e.g.: <0.02) in the table. Concentrations not determined are marked with empty cells. The combined uncertainty of the analyses is approximately between ±8% and ±12% for element concentrations above three times the corresponding MDL. It increased from around ±(15-20)% approaching 3xMDL level to roughly (+50/-100)% close to the MDL. The final atmospheric concentrations (in ng/m3 = 10(-9) g/m3, or pg/m3 = 10(-12) g/m**3) were calculated from the blank corrected element amounts and the corrected sampled air volume to standard conditions (273.16 K and 1013 hPa).