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
“Climate change is seen as one of the factors fuelling the increase in allergic responses.”
My BSometer scored 8.7 with this, as opposed to 9.85 (out of 10) with Mann’s Hockey Stick ‘science’.
The solution, of course, is to stop all agriculture in Europe and let the forests take over again. There will be much less pollen then. A good shower of rain also helps clear pollen out of the air.
John Trigge says:
April 18, 2012 at 12:55 am
………….
“We’d best let Toyota and the UNEP know that they are creating a problem by planting even more trees (http://www.toyotafund.eu/news/pressreleases/unep.aspx – The Toyota Fund for Europe (TFfE) – with support from NGO partners and Toyota companies – will plant 1.2 million trees in Europe by the end of next year as part of UNEP’s Billion Tree Campaign.)”
——–
By the sound of things, the way plants are spreading their own seed, there may not be anywhere for Toyota to plant 1.2 million trees.
So what is really being said here? 😉 Should we kill off all of the trees and plants or… Some how that doesn’t work for the environment… tonue in cheek of course
Have a good day all!
vince
I think it’s a proxy for the increase in medical marijuana growers in the US.
Hey she’s the 41st on the most “Most-Cited Female Authors on Climate Science” list.
Her field of research is ecoclimatology.
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/female_authors_table.html
#1 is Jane Lubchenco. Chief fabricator of Oregon’s AGW= Ocean “dead zones” that were then embellished to being “unprecedented, occurring every year, larger, lasting longer and at a tipping point” up until they miraculously vanished.
Her “dead zones” were used along with her “ocean acidification” claims to lure funding and to needlessly create the 5 Oregon marine reserves.
It was all a ruse and the dead zones are gone. The funding and marine reserves remain.
Some day the “distinguished” Lubchenco, (that’s how she refers to herself) this will get a full expose.
The dead zones have been replaced with a thriving and sustainable fishery.
http://www.oregondungeness.org/sustainable.shtml
Crab harvests from a healthy marine fisheries have soared. http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/08/oregon_coast_yields_second-ric.html
But your tax dollars are monitoring the ocean in search of more death!
http://www.coas.oregonstate.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=content.search&searchtype=people&detail=1&id=383
http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/msp/pub/18388.php
and it’s all fun $$$$
See here:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/deadzones/
Seriously, if CO2 is causing increased pollen shouldn’t that increase, at some level be global?
Of course, reforestation has absolutely nothing to do with this. /sarc
There is an informative web page here . . .
http://allergy.peds.arizona.edu/southwest/moving.html
. . . and, among many other interesting things, suggests a connection between moving from a home-area to a new location with differing plants:
“Allergy to unique pollen types in the Southwest usually takes at least a year to develop. Allergy to the unique pollen can develop much faster if there is allergenic cross reactivity, i.e., similarity, between the unique Arizona pollen and a pollen type at the origin of the person moving …”
The “Southwest” being the dry SW of the USA, for example, Arizona. It is interesting that early in the last century folks would move to the SW from the eastern States to improve their quality of life in the dryer air. Anecdotal reports then came that they planted and maintained landscapes that contributed to their breathing problems.
And, apparently there is some truth to this:
“Airborne pollen allergens in the Southwest are mainly, but not exclusively, from introduced species.
Also, from the above:
“Allergy can develop for the first time because of contact with pollen unique to the area, often after a “honeymoon” period of 12-18 months”
So, maybe the bottom line is that moving won’t solve your problem but if you do move – don’t bring your flowers along.
A very informative set of pages.
There is much more to a sneeze than co2 and pollen. The women of Europe grow flowers any place available to them and they look great. The view they present is very pleasing. Pity the politician who would abolish flowers. Well he would not get much.
The case for global warming should be proven before it becomes the cause of every natural problem, real and imagined, under the sun.
How much money is being poured into “Ecoclimatology”? Like all the green money going into studying the psychology of “denier,” it is all to boost the propaganda for anti-CO2 alarmism. Our tax dollars at work.
All of this violates the basic principle of republicanism: that the people are master and government the slave. Government should not be trying to tell people what to think, never mind by perpetrating a massive fraud.
Pollen increase is probably from the increase in oilseed rape crops around Europe
What I didn’t see mentioned is the anthropogenic component. My city plants, almost exclusively, males and most of them of fruit trees – don’t make fruit for the critters and don’t grow too big and bred to resist disease – almost perfect to beautify your city …….unless you are allergic to their pollen. Do the male trees know there are only a few females to compete for? If so, then they are under evolutionary pressure to produce more pollen. How smart is a cherry tree?
“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.”
So we have a new proxy to detect Urban Heat Island Effects? Or are efforts to green our cities working to add more plants or more pollen producing plants to the cities?
“From Reykjavik to Thessaloniki, pollen levels are on the increase”
I’m pretty sure that also happened LAST spring.
re: “cities are warmer, dryer and more polluted places”
Warmer, maybe. Heat islands are documented but it may have been an equal problem a hundred years ago. Dryer now that we don’t have horses urinating in the streets and open sewage flows, certainly. More polluted, demonstrably not. I’d still rather live in the woods than in any city but current cities are a marvel of sanitation and cleanliness compared prior years.
A much more credible article published years ago by my local township Arborist attributed the increased pollen to the selection process used by city planners when choosing what kinds of trees to plant along the city streets. Apparently, they want to minimize fruit because it creates too much debris that has to be cleaned up by city workers. (“Fruit” in the biological sense, not in the grocery sense.) This leads to a decision to 1) avoid self-pollinating species and 2) to plant just one gender of tree. For reasons that I don’t fully remember, they tend to pick the male gender. This floods the area with pollen, not because of any change in climate or ecology but because of human choices to plant the trees that generate large amounts of pollen.
Despite that, the increase in allergies is unexplained. Nothing in the model above nor in my Arborist’s theory explains the simultaneous increase in food allergies.
re: the theory that fewer bees are available to harvest the pollen
Sorry, that’s not possible. The vast majority of pollens to which humans are allergic are from wind-pollinated plants. That is, plants which bees don’t visit anyway. Plants which are bee-pollinated tend to produce fewer and much, much larger pollen granules. They can do this since the pollen is more efficiently delivered. Plants which evolved to a wind-driven strategy tend to produce very prolificly and very small granules. This includes all the grasses.
As a simple example, we talk about ‘hay fever’ (a grass), never ‘apple fever’. That’s not to say that some few people can’t be allergic to apples but it is negligible compared to the allergies to grasses.
As a useful rule of thumb (which means there are lots of exceptions), wind-pollinated plants tend to have green flowers. Red flowers are bird-pollinated. White, yellow and blue flowers are generally insect pollinated. And really stinky plants such as the Carrion Flower are fly-pollinated.
re: “cities are warmer, dryer and more polluted places”
Warmer, maybe. The heat island effect comparing urban to rural areas is well documented but I’m not aware of any credible records showing changes in the effect within an urban area as the structure of the city changes. Dryer I will concede with the happy note that we no longer have horses urinating in the streets, open sewage lines, etc. More polluted is demonstrably false. While I would still prefer a rural area to any city, modern cities are marvels of sanitation and cleanliness compared to the cities of old. My grandfather talked of taking two shirts to work in the steel-mill days because one would be too dirty to wear by lunchtime.
A few years back, my local township Arborist wrote an article with a much more credible explanation for the increase in pollen. He described the process that modern city planners go through when selecting the trees which they will plant along the city streets. Unlike a hundred years ago when the trees were selected and planted by the shop-keeper, modern cities buy and plant their trees in bulk. In order to keep maintenance costs down, they avoid trees that fruit whenever possible. That means avoiding self-pollinators and selecting a single gender of whatever tree you decide on. For reasons that I don’t fully remember, they tend to pick male gendered trees. The increase in pollen, then, has nothing to do with climate, weather, heat or CO2 but is driven by the decision to plant trees that naturally produce high volumes of pollen.
Despite that, neither my Arborist’s explanation nor the theory above explain the simultaneous increase in food allergies. Yes, allergies are increasing but this is not why.
Apologies for the duplicate. I got a log-in error and thought the first comment was lost. Please feel free to retract the dupl.
Carrie @ur momisugly 3.59am:
I was about to make a similar comment. We are surrounded here in North Yorkshire by fields and fields of oilseed rape. It has a strong sickly smell and makes me sneeze. It is often worse after rain, such as we’ve had in quantity today, when the moisture swells the pollen grains.
RE: Yes, allergies are increasing but this is not why.
Fewer people die from allergies prior to reaching reproductive age, genes propagate, full stop.
Well, if humans cause global warming, then this would be a negative feedback, right?/snark
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.
Developed world cities are generally getting drier. The main cause is reduced urban aerosols resulting in less precipitation from aerosol seeded clouds.
The same mechanism makes weekends drier than weekdays in cities.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039509.shtml
dp says:
April 18, 2012 at 7:41 am
Mike Jowsey says:
April 18, 2012 at 4:03 am
…
But then, I am just an uneducated cherry farmer – what would I know?
Never misunderestimate the important role of cherry pickers in the realm of climate science.
___________________________
You get a gold star for that.
Indeed, never misunderestimate the perseverence of climatologists; no matter how flimsy the data and science, they keep coming achoo!
Pollen grains are efficient cloud condensation nuclei
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/4/044015/pdf/1748-9326_5_4_044015.pdf
……………………………………
When the tree and grass pollen gets going- Does this mean more April showers, more rain in May, more clouds in June, and more thunderstorms in July? Looking forward to summer already!
………………………………………….
Biological Aerosol Particles Are A Larger Climate Forcing Than Considered By The IPCC – A New Paper “Primary Biological Aerosol Particles In The Atmosphere: A Review” By Després Et al 2012
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/biological-aersol-particles-are-a-larger-climate-forcing-than-considered-by-the-ipcc/
Aerosol seem to be an underlying factor in many processes affecting climate. The fact that aerosol and cloud microphysics are areas of greatest uncertainty is very telling. They don’t really know what the aerosols are doing or accounting for all the areas where they are constantly being produced or in what quantities. Yet clouds don’t form without them!
The concentration of aerosol dictates the concentration of droplets within clouds and hence
the precipitation efficiency of the cloud (Rosenfeld et al 2008).