Using Mesoscale Meteorological Models as a Tool to Forecast Pollen Concentrations (original) (raw)
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Using dispersion and mesoscale meteorological models to forecast pollen concentrations
Atmospheric Environment, 2005
This work describes the results of research into a source-oriented pollen concentration forecasting technique. Tests were conducted using the National Center for Atmospheric Research/ Penn State Fifth Generation Mesoscale Model (MM5), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT_4) Model combined with the locations of oak trees and their aerial coverage from biogenic emissions land cover database version 3.1 (BELD3). Daily forecasts of pollen concentrations via MM5 and HYSPLIT_4 were made with 30-min increments and tested against 30-min oak pollen data collected by the St. Louis County Department of Health in Clayton, Missouri, for the month of April 2000.
Forecasting airborne pollen concentrations: Development of local models
Aerobiologia, 2003
People's sensitivity to allergies may representone of the most important health factors of thenext century to which attention must be paid inorder to reduce the incidence of social costsand improve the quality of life.Taking into consideration the earnest requestsof the medical-scientific communityEmilia-Romagna ARPA (Regional Agency for thePrevention of the Environment) moved theattention from the monitoring to a short andmedium term prediction of the concentration ofallergenic pollens in the air in order toachieve a more effective therapeutic action.Our main objectives are to improve seasonalforecasts and to interpret anomalous years.A neural network model for grass pollenforecasting has been implemented. Inputvariables were meteorological situations, i.e.,daily temperature (max., min. and average) andrainfall, in addition to combinations ofindividual variables and their thresholds. Theoutput was daily pollen concentration.The model was able to understand and predictanomalous years. We demonstrate that therelationships between pollen concentrations andmeteorological situations are independent fromsite. This means that such models canunderstand the differences in differentareas.
Atmospheric Environment, 2011
Allergic airway diseases represent a complex health problem which can be exacerbated by the synergistic action of pollen particles and air pollutants such as ozone. Understanding human exposures to aeroallergens requires accurate estimates of the spatial distribution of airborne pollen levels as well as of various air pollutants at different times. However, currently there are no established methods for estimating allergenic pollen emissions and concentrations over large geographic areas such as the United States. A mechanistic modeling system for describing pollen emissions and transport over extensive domains has been developed by adapting components of existing regional scale air quality models and vegetation databases. First, components of the Biogenic Emissions Inventory System (BEIS) were adapted to predict pollen emission patterns. Subsequently, the transport module of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system was modified to incorporate description of pollen transport. The combined model, CMAQpollen, allows for simultaneous prediction of multiple air pollutants and pollen levels in a single model simulation, and uses consistent assumptions related to the transport of multiple chemicals and pollen species. Application case studies for evaluating the combined modeling system included the simulation of birch and ragweed pollen levels for the year 2002, during their corresponding peak pollination periods (April for birch and September for ragweed). The model simulations were driven by previously evaluated meteorological model outputs and emissions inventories for the eastern United States for the simulation period. A semi-quantitative evaluation of CMAQ-pollen was performed using tree and ragweed pollen counts in Newark, NJ for the same time periods. The peak birch pollen concentrations were predicted to occur within two days of the peak measurements, while the temporal patterns closely followed the measured profiles of overall tree pollen. For the case of ragweed pollen, the model was able to capture the patterns observed during September 2002, but did not predict an early peak; this can be associated with a wider species pollination window and inadequate spatial information in current land cover databases. An additional sensitivity simulation was performed to comparatively evaluate the dispersion patterns predicted by CMAQ-pollen with those predicted by the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model, which is used extensively in aerobiological studies. The CMAQ estimated concentration plumes matched the equivalent pollen scenario modeled with HYSPLIT. The novel pollen modeling approach presented here allows simultaneous estimation of multiple airborne allergens and other air pollutants, and is being developed as a central component of an integrated population exposure modeling system, the Modeling Environment for Total Risk
Biogeosciences, 2014
Exposure to bioaerosol allergens such as pollen can cause exacerbations of allergenic airway disease (AAD) in sensitive populations, and thus cause serious public health problems. Assessing these health impacts by linking the airborne pollen levels, concentrations of respirable allergenic material, and human allergenic response under current and future climate conditions is a key step toward developing preventive and adaptive actions. To that end, a regional-scale pollen emission and transport modeling framework was developed that treats allergenic pollens as non-reactive tracers within the WRF/CMAQ air-quality modeling system. The Simulator of the Timing and Magnitude of Pollen Season (STaMPS) model was used to generate a daily pollen pool that can then be emitted into the atmosphere by wind. The STaMPS is driven by species-specific meteorological (temperature and/or precipitation) threshold conditions and is designed to be flexible with respect to its representation of vegetation species and plant functional types (PFTs). The hourly pollen emission flux was parameterized by considering the pollen pool, friction velocity, and wind threshold values. The dry deposition velocity of each species of pollen was estimated based on pollen grain size and density. An evaluation of the pollen modeling framework was conducted for southern California for the period from March to June 2010. This period coincided with observations by the University of Southern California's Children's Health Study (CHS), which included O3, PM2.5, and pollen count, as well as measurements of exhaled nitric oxide in study participants. Two nesting domains with horizontal resolutions of 12 km and 4 km were constructed, and six representative allergenic pollen genera were included: birch tree, walnut tree, mulberry tree, olive tree, oak tree, and brome grasses. Under the current parameterization scheme, the modeling framework tends to underestimate walnut and peak oak pollen concentrations, and tends to overestimate grass pollen concentrations. The model shows reasonable agreement with observed birch, olive, and mulberry tree pollen concentrations. Sensitivity studies suggest that the estimation of the pollen pool is a major source of uncertainty for simulated pollen concentrations. Achieving agreement between emission modeling and observed pattern of pollen releases is the key for successful pollen concentration simulations.
Evaluation and forecasting of atmospheric concentrations of allergenic pollen in Europe
Diseases in the respiratory system due to aeroallergens, such as rhinitis and asthma, are major causes of a demand for increased healthcare, loss of productivity and an increased rate of morbidity. Pollenosis accounts for 12 -45 % of overall allergy cases. The sensitisation to pollen allergens is increasing in most European regions. The adverse health effects of allergens can be reduced by preemptive medical measures. However, their planning requires reliable forecasts of high atmospheric pollen concentrations , .
Frontiers in Allergy
Exposures to airborne allergenic pollen have been increasing under the influence of changing climate. A modeling system incorporating pollen emissions and atmospheric transport and fate processes has been developed and applied to simulate spatiotemporal distributions of two major aeroallergens, oak and ragweed pollens, across the contiguous United States (CONUS) for both historical (year 2004) and future (year 2047) conditions. The transport and fate of pollen presented here is simulated using our adapted version of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. Model performance was evaluated using observed pollen counts at monitor stations across the CONUS for 2004. Our analysis shows that there is encouraging consistency between observed seasonal mean concentrations and corresponding simulated seasonal mean concentrations (oak: Pearson = 0.35, ragweed: Pearson = 0.40), and that the model was able to capture the statistical patterns of observed pollen concentration distributio...
Incorporation of pollen data in source maps is vital for pollen dispersion models
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 2019
Information about distribution of pollen sources, i.e. their presence and abundance in a specific region, is important especially when atmospheric transport models are applied to forecast pollen concentrations. The goal of this study is to evaluate three pollen source maps using an atmospheric transport model and study the effect on the model results by combining these source maps with pollen data. Here we evaluate three maps for the birch taxon: (1) a map derived by combining land cover data and forest inventory; (2) a map obtained from land cover data and calibrated using model simulations and pollen observations; (3) a statistical map resulting from analysis of forest inventory and forest plot data. The maps were introduced to the Enviro-HIRLAM (Environment-High Resolution Limited Area Model) as input data to simulate birch pollen concentrations over Europe for the birch pollen season 2006. 18 model runs were performed using each of the selected maps in turn with and without calibration with observed pollen data from 2006. The model results were compared with the pollen observation data at 12 measurement sites located in Finland, Denmark and Russia. We show that calibration of the maps using pollen observations significantly improved the model performance for all three maps. The findings also indicate the large sensitivity of the model results to the source maps and agree well with other studies on birch showing that pollen or hybrid-based source maps provide the best model performance. This study highlights the importance of including pollen data in the production of source maps for pollen dispersion modelling and for exposure studies. 1 Introduction Aeroallergens are a specific type of atmospheric aerosols causing allergic reactions among people suffering from allergic rhinitis and it is often connected with asthma (Bachert et al., 2004). The amount of allergic patients sensitive to pollen is assessed 1
Increasing resolution of airborne pollen forecasting at a discrete sampled area in the southwest Mediterranean Basin, 2019
Daily fluctuations of the airborne pollen concentrations produce variations on symptomatology in allergic population. Such fluctuations are influenced by local vegetal coverage, flowering phenology, geography and climatology. Since 1991, airborne pollen of Malaga province (southern Spain) has been monitored in 7 different locations. Malaga station has been kept operational uninterruptedly throughout the studied period, while the rest of the stations only worked in periods of 2-4 years. Weekly, its pollen information is updated online to inform the population in order to prevent allergic diseases. Increasing the spatial resolution of pollen information would be very useful for allergic population living at unsampled locations. Due to the impossibility of keeping operational a high number of pollen stations covering the whole province of Malaga, the aim of this study is to create spatial models to extrapolate and forecast the pollen concentrations to Malaga province by using the concentrations registered at the capital as unique input. To do so, the relationships obtained between the airborne pollen concentrations detected at Malaga city and those detected at the other stations have been used to elaborate models for the main pollen types registered at the province. These models were spatially interpolated all over the province by using co-kriging techniques and the Compensated Thermicity Index as covariable. As result of this work, pollen distribution of the 8 most prevalent taxa has been depicted all over the whole Malaga province and an allergy alert system has been set up to extrapolate pollen information from Malaga to the whole province.
Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., 2013
A pollen model that simulates the timing and production of wind-dispersed allergenic pollen by terrestrial, temperate vegetation has been developed to quantify how pollen occurrence may be affected by climate change and to investigate how pollen can interact with anthropogenic pollutants to affect human health. The Simulator of the Timing and Nevada. Differences in the simulated timing and magnitude of pollen season for the selected allergenic species under current and future climate scenarios are presented. The results suggest that across all of the simulated species, pollen season starts an average of 5-6 days earlier under predicted future climatic conditions with an associated average annual domain-wide temperature increase of about 1 • C compared to 5 simulated current conditions. Differences in the amount of pollen produced under the two scenarios vary by species and are affected by the selected simulation period (1 March-30 June). Uncertainties associated with the STaMPS model and future model development plans are also discussed.
Using meteorologic data to predict daily ragweed pollen levels
2000
Pollen-related allergy is a common disease resulting in symptoms of hay fever and asthma. Control of symptoms depends (generally) on avoidance and pharmacological treatment. Both of these approaches could benefit from accurate predictions of pollen levels for future days. We have constructed a model that uses meteorological data to predict ragweed pollen levels based on air samples collected daily in