On the plus side, they mention in the press release that CO2 boosts plant growth.
A look at tomorrow’s climate:
Pollen levels are rising across Europe
16.04.2012, Press releases
From Reykjavik to Thessaloniki, pollen levels are on the increase. A team of researchers headed by Prof. Annette Menzel at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen reports that pollen counts have already risen across Europe in recent years. Their findings are based on an analysis of pollen time series in 13 countries (PLoS ONE). This trend is more pronounced in urban areas, where pollen counts are rising by an average of around three percent per year compared with one percent per year in rural areas. And the scientists believe that climate change will strengthen this trend.
When trees and plants release their pollen, millions of hay fever sufferers are affected by sneezing fits and itchy, watery eyes. Today in Germany, roughly every fourth person suffers from allergies – and this figure is set to rise. Climate change is seen as one of the factors fuelling the increase in allergic responses. Lab experiments and a small number of open-air studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air can boost plant growth and subsequently pollen production. Warmer temperatures and invasive species are also leading to longer pollen seasons.
An international team of researchers headed by ecoclimatologist Prof. Annette Menzel at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) has revealed just how much the pollen burden has increased across Europe.
The team of scientists evaluated 1,221 long-term pollen series from thirteen different countries, calculating normalized trends of annual pollen indices over a period of at least ten years. These indices can now be used to compare different key allergenic pollen species from different climates.
The researchers found that the concentration of airborne pollens has risen particularly sharply in cities in recent years. In urban areas across Europe, pollen concentration has risen by an average of three percent per year. In rural areas, they recorded a rise of one percent per annum. An increase in CO2 concentration is the most probable cause for the rise in pollen levels.
Prof. Menzel believes that allergy sufferers from Reykjavik to Thessaloniki will be exposed to even higher pollen levels in the future. “Even today, cities are warmer, dryer and more polluted places,” explains Prof. Menzel. The ecoclimatologist is therefore using urban areas as a testbed for developing more accurate predictions about the effects of climate change. Temperatures in dense, urban environments, known as heat islands, can be one to three degrees higher than the surrounding areas. Levels of CO2 and pollutants are also often higher in these environments. Ozone values, however, are usually higher in the regions surrounding larger cities. But this does not give the all-clear for rural areas, as the climatologist explains: “The conditions we are recording in urban environments today are expected to spread to rural areas in the future.”
Pollen, however, is only a carrier of allergens, making pollen count just one factor in the prediction of future allergy trends. Prof. Menzel is therefore working with allergologist Prof. Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann from the Center of Allergy and Environment (ZAUM) (TUM / German Research Center for Environmental Health) to research allergy trends in urban and rural areas. Their investigations have revealed that levels of allergens vary from year to year and that pollen counts also differ in rural and urban areas. More detailed research results will soon be available. What the scientists do already know, however, is that city dwellers will not be the only ones suffering from future climate trends.
Background:
The research took place within the framework of the Global Change focus group at the Institute for Advanced Study of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen.
Publication:
C. Ziello, T.H. Sparks, N. Estrella, J. Belmonte, K.C. Bergmann, E. Bucher, M.A. Brighetti, A. Damialis, M. Detandt, C. Galan, R. Gehrig, L. Grewling, A.M. Gutierrez Bustillo, M. Hallsdottir, M.-C. Kockhans-Bieda, C. De Linares, D. Myszkowska, A. Paldy, A. Sanchez, M. Smith, M. Thibaudon, A. Travaglini, A. Uruska, R.M. Valencia-Barrera, D. Vokou, R. Wachter, L.A. de Weger, A. Menzel (2012): Changes to airborne pollen counts across Europe, PLoS ONE
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034076
Contact:
Technische Universitaet Muenchen
Prof. Annette Menzel Chair of Ecoclimatology
Phone: 08161 714740
Email: amenzel@wzw.tum.de
http://www.oekoklimatologie.wzw.tum.de
Maybe it’s greenies getting up their noses… 🙂
I have suffered from Hay fever for 50 years, the killer pollen years are the wet springs which increases plant growth followed by a summer with one hot dry spell which the plants use to drop their large reserve of pollen. In a hotter world without the wet spring there will be no record pollen releases.
“Even today, cities are warmer, dryer and more polluted places,” explains Prof. Menzel
So London say is more polluted now than in Victorian days, or during the 50’s? It really makes you wonder what planet some people live on.
The likely reason for increases in allergy and hay fever is more adults and children living in ‘clean’ urban environments. If exposure to high pollen levels were the cause of hay fever, children of farmers would have a higher incidence of hay fever. In fact they have a lower incidence.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10051699
Why only such a short & therefore inconclusive timeframe? If 30 years is the minimum yardstick by which to beat us all, what is 10 years all about? Spit in the ocean!
Since UHI is consensually negligible, the pollen difference must be because of something else, not CO2.
ARRGH back to the drawing board.
Hey, don’t mock it! “The research took place within the framework of the Global Change focus group at the Institute for Advanced Study of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen.”, not a sub group of the Global Change focus group, or a committee reporting to the Global Change focus group, but the actual Global Change focus group itself!
“g2-b369c06850afa63886091a1f0601abd5 says:
April 18, 2012 at 12:24 am
Depending, of course, on your definition of ‘recent’ this study might be a little missleading since temps haven’t been rising over the past ten years or so. Maybe they should be identifying what these people are reacting to rather than just make assumptions.”
Hansen says the warming will begin again in the next 3-5 years:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/
“Has Global Warming Slowed in the Past Decade?
Figure 7 helps us examine the issue of whether global warming has “stopped” in the past decade or at least slowed down from the rate of the prior two decades. Global temperature in 2011 was lower than in 1998. However, global temperature has a strong interannual variability tied to the Southern Oscillation (El Niño-La Niña cycle), as is apparent in Fig. 7.”
“Summary
2011 was only the ninth warmest year in the GISS analysis of global temperature change, yet nine of the ten warmest years in the instrumental record (since 1880) have occurred in the 21st century. The past year has been cooled by a moderately strong La Niña. The 5-year (60-month) running mean global temperature hints at a slowdown in the global warming rate during the past few years. However, the cool La Niña phase of the cyclically variable Southern Oscillation of tropical temperatures has been dominant in the past three years, and the deepest solar minimum in the period of satellite data occurred over the past half dozen years. We conclude that the slowdown of warming is likely to prove illusory, with more rapid warming appearing over the next few years.”
Cutting a tree a day keeps the doctor away
Lab experiments and limited field studies on erectile dysfunction in squirrels *may* be linked to increased CO2. If this trend continues there will a catastrophic decline in squirrels by 2350, a recent study says.
The Professor “believes” his results show that ……
Grant sniffers.
Cities MORE polluted now?!!! We haven’t burned a river in decades. I haven’t seen a brown sky in decades (except for a mud storm in Saudi once – freaky sandstorm+thunderstorm) So no! I would say I can falsify that claim by personal experience. These watermelons don’t know what they are talking about.
“Their findings are based on an analysis of pollen time series in 13 countries (PLoS ONE). This trend is more pronounced in urban areas, where pollen counts are rising by an average of around three percent per year compared with one percent per year in rural areas.”
Is this more evidence of UHI?
Reminds me of the paper a few years ago that said global warming (increased atmospheric CO2) was causing an increase in poison ivy. No mention of it also increasing the grain harvest.
All the (bad) news that’s fit to print.
It’s coming from the biofuel.
The article speaks only of the increases in concentration (3% urban, 1% rural) but does not give the actual concentrations for the two areas. So we don’t know which has the highest concentrations. If pollen count in rural areas is higher but there are fewer allergy sufferers, then increased pollen counts may not, as predicted, lead to an increase in sufferers.
Some studies have shown that 9 out of 10 hay fever sufferers are allergic to grass pollen. It may be that local councils, in order to save money, are mowing less frequently resulting in more grasses flowering than previously when mowing was done more often.
Ecoclimatologist..wonder how much hard science is necessary for that title.
This is because farmers are growing the same crops at the same time! We are surrounded by rape crops here in East Yorkshire, in fact most of the UK, and obviously every field grows at the same rate and produces pollen at the same time, this didn’t use to happen when different crops were grown next to each other as different crops flowered at different times! It’s not rocket science, doh!
Bee poplulations have been declining for decades in Europe, recently attributed to difficult overwintering conditions in combination with the Varroa destructor parasitic mite. Although bees mainly harvest nectar, their pollen harvest may impact the amount of pollen in the atmosphere. I wonder if the researchers in this study considered this.
I imagine bee populations in cities would be greatly reduced too due to the sparcity of commercial or wild beehives.
Perhaps a couple of the huge team of researchers on this project may have had the time to look into declining bee populations and the effect bees have on pollen counts in the atmosphere.
But then, I am just an uneducated cherry farmer – what would I know?
Surprising that they used actual data and not a computer model. Is there a tipping point where we’ll have irreversible runaway pollen burden? Are pollen deniers in the pay of Big Pollen?
Paul Mackey says:April 18, 2012 at 12:42 am
“… and cities – thta alos measn more plants …”
Those watery eyes make it hard to see the keyboard, don’t they?
The claim that cities today are “more polluted places” must surely be indefensible. At least in Europe, after decades of ever tighter emissions control, combined with the decline and displacement of heavy industries associated with pollution.
That pollen counts are increasing faster in urban areas, compared to rural, is interesting. Is that perhaps a measure of the “greening” of cities? Or are there other more influential factors.
The study attributes this to CO2 increase, but then why would there be a “sudden” increase in urban pollen counts over the last few years? Pollen is airborne, what account did they take of wind patterns over the past decade?
Are cities really “drier” than in the past? Anyone have data on comparative precipitation in European cities handy? I would be surprised to find Urban areas are drier.
Have they done any comparisons on the ratio of allergy sufferers in urban versus rural, or city versus suburb?
Looks like They`re running out of bad things to blame CO2 for so they`re being good little watermelons and recycling the scares , “allergies worse” is already on the list .
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
I`m hoping They`ll run through the scares alphabetically this time `cos “Alligators in the Thames” would be the next one . :o)
In other words it’s contagious like just like murders, robberies, hard drugs, school dropouts, single mothers on welfare, etc.
Very little to with climate change. I thought it was green chic to have rooftop and balcony gardens, aka, Local Urban Pollen Islands, to replace growing flowers and vegetables in traditional green houses and farms. Lots of honey also being produced in urban areas all over Europe in the last decade. A rooftop flower garden in the right wind conditions is many times more potent to allergy sufferers than the same at ground level.
It’s pretty simple (at least to me) that the severity of allergies and others can be traced to widespread vitamin D deficiency as we come out of winter. Your body converts vitamin D into a powerful steroid that acts as genetic regulator that people don’t know much about these days. We’re just finding out what this amazing “vitamin” can do. It’s funny how Superman gets his strength from the sun because it’s how it actually works with humans. Believe it or not, sun scare is as bad as CO2 causing CAWG… http://www.vitamindsportsbook.com/ – I think it’s a good book to get anyone started if they want to learn more about vitamin D or simply visit http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/.
Anyways, for a long time, I’ve suffered sinus infection brought on by cold/allergies every winter which seemed to take a long time to recover. A few years ago, I heard about vitamin D so I tried it out. It actually worked to my amazement because I tried everything to prevent that annoying illness in the past. The current recommendation for vitamin D is pretty low (600 IU a day/ a cup of milk contains only 100 IU of vitamin D) while vitamin D experts recommend at least 4000 IU a day for adults.
http://blog.vitamindcouncil.org/2012/03/22/randomized-controlled-trial-shows-link-between-vitamin-d-and-allergic-rhinitis/
Hmmm, more pollen. Does that mean more killer bees invading the cities?
I was also thinking about the alleged recent shortage of bees causing more pollen to remain uncaptured, thus able to blow around. But it appears from real data that the whole colony-collapse thing is a myth. Here’s an article on the slow and steady decline in bee population since 1950!
http://myrmecos.net/2011/03/10/honey-bee-colony-collapse-disorder-in-context