According to new research, the pollen season is going to get longer and more intense with climate change.
If the world continues to produce carbon dioxide emissions at a high rate, the US will face a 200 percent increase in total pollen this century. Under that scenario, the season will start up to 40 days earlier in the spring and last up to 19 days longer.
We study how the atmosphere and climate affect trees and plants. We looked at more than a dozen different types of grasses and trees and how their pollen will affect regions across the US in different ways.
Oak and cypress will give the Northeast the biggest increase, but allergens will be on the rise everywhere, with consequences for human health and the economy.
There are two people in the picture,Zhang and Steiner.
The maps on the left show the average length of the pollen season for three types of plants: platanus, or plane trees, such as sycamores; betula, or Birch; and ambrosia, or ragweed. If carbon dioxide emissions continue at a high rate, the maps on the right show expected changes in total days by the end of the century.
We have some good news if you're pounding at the thought of it, and you know in advance when the pollen waves are coming. The model from this study is being used to develop more accurate local pollen forecasts.
The basics should be the first thing we start with. The male genetic material for a plant's reproduction is contained in the dust-like grains of pollen.
The amount of pollen produced depends on how the plant grows. Increasing global temperatures will boost plant growth in many areas, and that will affect the production of pollen. There is more to the equation than temperature. Carbon dioxide emissions will be the main driver of the future pollen increase.
Plants will have more time to reproduce and emit pollen as a result of the higher temperature. Plants may grow larger and produce more pollen because of carbon dioxide. We found that carbon dioxide levels may have a bigger impact on pollen increases than temperature will.
We looked at different types of pollen instead of treating the same types.
In the late winter and spring, pollination starts with leafy trees. There are some trees that cause allergies, like mulberry. Grasses come out in the summer, followed by ragweed in the late summer. In the Southeast, evergreen trees start to grow in January. cedar fever is the same as hay fever in Texas.
As temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions rise, the seasons for a lot of allergenic trees will overlap. It used to be that oak trees would release pollen first, and then Birch would pollinate. They see more overlap of their pollen seasons now.
The pollen season will change more in the north than in the south due to larger temperature increases.
Grass and weed pollen can be expected to increase in the future. The peak pollen season in the Pacific Northwest is likely to be a month earlier.
Most forecasts give a broad estimate. There aren't many observing stations for pollen counts. Most are run by allergy clinics, and there are less than 100 of these stations distributed across the country. Michigan does not have any.
It takes a lot of labor to measure different types of pollen. Current forecasts have a lot of uncertainties. The weather forecast and what a station has observed in the past are likely to be used.
If our model is integrated into a forecasting framework, it could provide more targeted pollen forecasts.
Satellite data and on-the-ground surveys can be used to estimate where the trees are. The phenology of the pollen is what we know about how temperature affects it. We can use meteorological factors like wind, relative humidity and precipitation to figure out how much pollen gets into the air, and atmospheric models can show how it moves and blows around, to create a real-time forecast.
People with allergies will know what is coming in their area because of the information we have.
We are talking with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab about ways to integrate that information into a tool for air quality forecasting.
There are still unknowns when it comes to long-term projections. Scientists don't fully understand why plants produce more pollen in certain years. It is not a good way to include that in models.
It is not clear how plants will respond if carbon dioxide levels go through the roof. Residential trees are difficult to capture. There are few surveys showing where ragweed is growing in the US, but that can be improved.
The study found that the pollen season in North America was 20 days longer in 2021 than it was in 1990.
Increasing pollen levels in the future will have a bigger impact than just a few sniffles and headaches. Seasonal allergies affect about 30 percent of the population, and they have economic impacts, from health costs to missed working days.
The University of Michigan has a student in Atmospheric Science.
This article is free to use under a Creative Commons license. The original article is worth a read.
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