Influence of climate change on airborne pollen concentrations in Madrid, 1979‐2018

Author(s):  
J Subiza ◽  
M Cabrera ◽  
JM Cárdenas‐Rebollo ◽  
JC Craciunescu ◽  
MJ Narganes
2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (7) ◽  
pp. e2013284118
Author(s):  
William R. L. Anderegg ◽  
John T. Abatzoglou ◽  
Leander D. L. Anderegg ◽  
Leonard Bielory ◽  
Patrick L. Kinney ◽  
...  

Airborne pollen has major respiratory health impacts and anthropogenic climate change may increase pollen concentrations and extend pollen seasons. While greenhouse and field studies indicate that pollen concentrations are correlated with temperature, a formal detection and attribution of the role of anthropogenic climate change in continental pollen seasons is urgently needed. Here, we use long-term pollen data from 60 North American stations from 1990 to 2018, spanning 821 site-years of data, and Earth system model simulations to quantify the role of human-caused climate change in continental patterns in pollen concentrations. We find widespread advances and lengthening of pollen seasons (+20 d) and increases in pollen concentrations (+21%) across North America, which are strongly coupled to observed warming. Human forcing of the climate system contributed ∼50% (interquartile range: 19–84%) of the trend in pollen seasons and ∼8% (4–14%) of the trend in pollen concentrations. Our results reveal that anthropogenic climate change has already exacerbated pollen seasons in the past three decades with attendant deleterious effects on respiratory health.


Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 702
Author(s):  
María Fernández-González ◽  
Estefanía González-Fernández ◽  
Helena Ribeiro ◽  
Ilda Abreu ◽  
F. Javier Rodríguez-Rajo

Natural forests are considered a reservoir of great biological diversity constituting one of the most important ecosystems in Europe. Quercus study is essential to assess ecological conservation of forests, and also of economic importance for different industries. In addition, oak pollen can cause high sensitization rates of respiratory allergies in pollen-allergy sufferers. This study sought to know the pollen production of six oak species in the transitional area between the Eurosiberian and Mediterranean Bioclimatic Regions, and to assess the impact of climate change on airborne oak pollen concentrations. The study was conducted in Ourense (NW Spain) over the 1993–2019 period. A Lanzoni VPPS 2000 volumetric trap monitored airborne pollen. A pollen production study was carried out in ten trees randomly selected in several Quercus forest around the Ourense city. Oak pollen represented around 14% of annual total pollen registered in the atmosphere of Ourense, showing an increasing trend during the last decade. Pollen production of the six studied oak species follow the proportions 1:1:2:5:90:276 for Q. ilex, Q. faginea, Q. rubra, Q. suber, Q. pyrenaica, and Q. robur respectively. We detected a significant trend to the increase of the annual maximum temperature, whereas a decrease of the maximum and mean temperatures during three previous months to oak flowering. This could be related with the detected trend to a delay of the oak Main Pollen Season onset of 0.47 days per year. We also found significant trends to an increase of the annual pollen integral of 7.9% pollen grains per year, and the pollen peak concentration of 7.5% pollen grains per year. Quercus airborne pollen monitoring as well as the knowledge of the reproductive behavior of the main oak species, bring us an important support tool offering a promising bio-indicator to detect ecological variations induced by climate change.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. e0123077 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Toro A. ◽  
Alicia Córdova J. ◽  
Mauricio Canales ◽  
Raul G. E. Morales S. ◽  
Pedro Mardones P. ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Polling ◽  
Chen Li ◽  
Lu Cao ◽  
Fons Verbeek ◽  
Letty A. de Weger ◽  
...  

AbstractMonitoring of airborne pollen concentrations provides an important source of information for the globally increasing number of hay fever patients. Airborne pollen is traditionally counted under the microscope, but with the latest developments in image recognition methods, automating this process has become feasible. A challenge that persists, however, is that many pollen grains cannot be distinguished beyond the genus or family level using a microscope. Here, we assess the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to increase taxonomic accuracy for airborne pollen. As a case study we use the nettle family (Urticaceae), which contains two main genera (Urtica and Parietaria) common in European landscapes which pollen cannot be separated by trained specialists. While pollen from Urtica species has very low allergenic relevance, pollen from several species of Parietaria is severely allergenic. We collect pollen from both fresh as well as from herbarium specimens and use these without the often used acetolysis step to train the CNN model. The models show that unacetolyzed Urticaceae pollen grains can be distinguished with > 98% accuracy. We then apply our model on before unseen Urticaceae pollen collected from aerobiological samples and show that the genera can be confidently distinguished, despite the more challenging input images that are often overlain by debris. Our method can also be applied to other pollen families in the future and will thus help to make allergenic pollen monitoring more specific.


2019 ◽  
Vol 199 ◽  
pp. 435-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Oteros ◽  
Karl-Christian Bergmann ◽  
Annette Menzel ◽  
Athanasios Damialis ◽  
Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann ◽  
...  

Aerobiologia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonella Cristofori ◽  
Edith Bucher ◽  
Michele Rossi ◽  
Fabiana Cristofolini ◽  
Veronika Kofler ◽  
...  

AbstractArtemisia pollen is an important aeroallergen in late summer, especially in central and eastern Europe where distinct anemophilous Artemisia spp. produce high amounts of pollen grains. The study aims at: (i) analyzing the temporal pattern of and changes in the Artemisia spp. pollen season; (ii) identifying the Artemisia species responsible for the local airborne pollen load.Daily pollen concentration of Artemisia spp. was analyzed at two sites (BZ and SM) in Trentino-Alto Adige, North Italy, from 1995 to 2019.The analysis of airborne Artemisia pollen concentrations evidences the presence of a bimodal curve, with two peaks, in August and September, respectively. The magnitude of peak concentrations varies across the studied time span for both sites: the maximum concentration at the September peak increases significantly for both the BZ (p < 0.05) and SM (p < 0.001) site. The first peak in the pollen calendar is attributable to native Artemisia species, with A. vulgaris as the most abundant; the second peak is mostly represented by the invasive species A. annua and A. verlotiorum (in constant proportion along the years), which are causing a considerable increase in pollen concentration in the late pollen season in recent years.. The spread of these species can affect human health, increasing the length and severity of allergenic pollen exposure in autumn, as well as plant biodiversity in both natural and cultivated areas, with negative impacts on, e.g., Natura 2000 protected sites and crops.


Proceedings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (20) ◽  
pp. 1519
Author(s):  
Rocío González-Naharro ◽  
Elia Quirós ◽  
Santiago Fernández-Rodríguez ◽  
Inmaculada Silva-Palacios ◽  
Rafael Tormo-Molina ◽  
...  

New space technologies as Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) have been used to display several phenological cycles of ecosystems around the world. The aim of this study was to establish the relationship between Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI, associated to oak trees within three training data polygons (15, 25 and 50 km-distance to the volumetric sampler Hirst), and the daily average Quercus airborne pollen concentrations in 20 years. The study was developed in Badajoz (SW Iberian Peninsula) with a continuous pollen recording in the period from 1994 to 2013. The main novelty of this study has been the analysis of the correlation between the two-time series, using Spearman test. Within the 20 studied years, 12 years obtained significant values in the Spearman test in the whole studied area.


Agronomy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
María Fernández-González ◽  
Helena Ribeiro ◽  
Alba Piña-Rey ◽  
Ilda Abreu ◽  
F. Javier Rodríguez-Rajo

Phenological, aerobiological, and weather data are useful tools to study local and regional flowering dynamics in crops with economic importance. The present study focuses on four autochthonous grapevine cultivars, namely, ‘Treixadura’, ‘Godello’, ‘Loureira’, and ‘Albariño’ (Vitis vinifera L.), which belong to the Designation of Origin Ribeiro area (located in northwestern Spain) from 2015–2019. The aims of the work were to (1) compare the airborne pollen concentration in the vineyard collected by two different traps, (2) analyze the influence of the main meteorological variables on cultivar phenology and pollen concentration, and (3) test the contribution of the air masses on pollen concentrations in the vineyard. Phenological development has been assessed twice weekly, according to the Biologische Bundesanstalt, Bundessortenamt und Chemische Industrie (BBCH) scale. Airborne pollen concentrations were monitored by using two traps during stage 6 (flowering), namely, a Hirst volumetric sampler and a Cour passive trap. The bioclimatic conditions affected the duration of flowering, ranging from 11 and 24 days. The highest seasonal pollen integral (SPIn) was registered in 2016 for the Hirst sampler, with 302 pollen, and in 2019 for the Cour trap, with 1,797,765 pollen/m2/day. The main variables affecting pollen concentrations were average temperature during the main pollen season, as well as, temperatures and dew points during the pre-peak period. The relationship between pollen data registered by both traps and the obtained harvest indicate that the Hirst trap may be more suitable for predicting a local production and that the Cour sampler is more appropriate for forecasting regional productions.


1973 ◽  
Vol 13 (61) ◽  
pp. 193 ◽  
Author(s):  
DF Langridge ◽  
RD Goodman

The availability of pollen for fertilization of Moss' Early cherries and its dispersal by wind and by honeybees was studied in the laboratory and in a cherry orchard. Ripening and dehiscence of anthers was promoted by higher temperatures and lower relative humidities. Airborne pollen concentrations in the orchard were greater between 10.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. than during the remainder of the day. Flight activity of bees was related to ambient temperatures and bee visits to cherry flowers were comparable with those for apples. Enclosing trees in beeproof cages caused a marked decline in fruit yields.


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