By Anthony Watts and Sterling Burnett
Axios Atlanta recently published an article titled “Pollen season in Atlanta is getting worse, thanks to climate change,” claiming that rising temperatures caused by climate change are making allergy season more severe. Axios’ article is misleading at best, and misses a larger point. Data and historical trends indicate that while pollen levels fluctuate, factors like urbanization and land use changes—particularly the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect—are far more significant contributors to Atlanta’s pollen patterns than their so-called local climate change.
“A warming climate means that allergy season is starting earlier and lasting longer,” write Kristal Dixon and Alex Fitzpatrick for Axios. “Longer, warmer growing seasons are leading to earlier pollen releases and higher overall pollen levels.”
Dixon and Fitzpatrick ignore several key facts in their attempt to connect long-term climate change to longer allergy seasons. For example, Atlanta’s well-documented Urban Heat Island effect—caused by dense infrastructure, concrete, and asphalt trapping heat—plays a much larger role in local temperature trends than any global warming influence. The city has expanded significantly over the last few decades, increasing localized temperatures and extending the growing season for plants.
According to a NASA analysis of Atlanta’s UHI effect, the city consistently experiences significantly higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas due to human-made structures retaining heat. This localized warming—not global climate change—is a key driver of temperature-related shifts in pollen cycles.
Second, pollen levels are heavily influenced by regional vegetation patterns and CO₂ fertilization effects, which lead to healthier plant growth.
As pointed out in a Climate Realism article, pollen season is largely dependent on precipitation levels and natural climate variability, not just temperature. When there’s more rain, plants produce more pollen. Conversely, droughts can suppress pollen levels. Climate models do not reliably account for these local and regional factors, yet Axios presents the issue as if it is solely driven by global temperature changes.
Additionally, previous claims about worsening allergy seasons have not held up to scrutiny. For example, a 2022 Climate Realism analysis debunked similar assertions by showing that pollen trends vary by region and that some areas are actually experiencing less pollen, not more. Furthermore, studies cited in mainstream media often rely on cherry-picked data from limited time frames rather than examining long-term historical trends.
Axios embraced Climate Central’s use of “consecutive freeze-free days” as a proxy for pollen season noting that between 1970 and 2024 the number of consecutive freeze free days increased it cities like Reno, Myrtle Beach, and Toledo. Interestingly, it didn’t provide any data addressing whether incidences of treatment for allergies or sales of allergy medicine increased in those cities corresponding to the increase in days between and without freezing temperatures. And, despite climate change being a supposedly global phenomenon, it turns out the number of cities experienced a decline in the number of consecutive freeze free days, so the logical question to ask, did reported incidences of allergy attacks, or sales of allergy medicine, as a proxy, also decline. If Axios asked those questions it certainly provided no answer to them in the article, yet that is a reasonable connection to make if one is asking whether climate change is impacting allergies.
Even if climate change, as opposed to other factors, is causing longer allergy seasons, this misses a larger point, the positive benefits of a decline in freezing temperatures. The Axios story mentioned one in passing but failed to expand on it writing, “[a]bove-freezing temperatures allow for better plant growth.” While the suffering of allergy sufferers should not be ignored, as Axios notes, allergies are treatable, but fewer below freezing days and nights benefit plants, pollinating insects, and humans alike.
Climate Realism has made this point in repeated posts, here, here, and here, for example. Global greening has contributed to the largest decline in global hunger in history. Greater plant growth not only removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but the allergy causing pollen it emits is great for pollinating insects like bees, and birds.
More directly, copious peer reviewed reports confirm that cold temperatures are responsible for 10 times more deaths than hot temperatures. As a result, as the number of freezing days has declined, the number of deaths attributable to non-optimum temperatures has also fallen sharply, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. (See the table, below)
Instead of taking a broad, evidence-based approach, Axios in its attempt to connect worsening allergies to climate change it has once again resorted to alarmist claims without addressing all relevant factors. Atlanta’s allergy season is influenced by many variables, including land use changes, dense urban landscaping with pollen producing plants, increased green space, and urbanization. Blaming climate change without considering these other influences misleads the public and fosters unnecessary panic. If the media is truly interested in informing the public, they should focus on all contributing factors that might be causing a longer allergy season. They could also discuss the tremendous global net benefits of fewer freezing days.
The Heartland Institute is one of the world’s leading free-market think tanks. It is a national nonprofit research and education organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
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Ah… CO2! Is there anything that the Magic Molecule can’t do?
Did you know that CO2 is actually a bronchial dilator.
That is why breathing into a paper bag can sometimes help alleviate an asthma attack, as it increases the CO2 concentration in the body.
I can see how the alleged warming could cause the allergy season to start earlier, but I don’t see how it can make it last longer.
A more likely explanation would be millions of homeowners, each planting their gardens with many different flowering species. Many of these flowering species won’t be native to the Atlanta region and as a result flowering on different schedules. As a result, the allergy season gets extended.
I remember when Obama blamed climate change for his daughter’s asthma. They lived in Hawaii, Chicago and DC. Which exact climate change was responsible for the asthma in DC?
Bazza’s cigarette smoke had nothing to do with it?
If climate change includes the increased levels of atmospheric CO2, then the answer is an unequivocal yes, it is definitely increasing pollen counts and increasing allergic reactions. Just scan the plant growth rates under different C02 levels on the following website.
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php
On the flip side we have much increased crop production and growth of all plant species, terrestrial and marine. And we aren’t even halfway to the optimal CO2 levels for most plant species!!!
Like “green beer” on St. Patrick’s Day, “climate change” is now a factoid in the collective mind. The symbols, such as Polar Bears, ice free Arctic, and more intense hurricanes will go away. New symbols will replace others until the “ClimateCult”™ transitions to a new harangue or the members age out/die.
Still, the things such as pollen season should, as in this post, be shown for the carp they are.
Microplastics are the newest scare, but I can’t see it lasting because there’s no money in it. “The Next Pandemic™” looks like a great moneyspinner for the already wealthy few.
“Microplastics are the newest scare”
Do you mean the microplastic particles that erode from wind turbine blades ? 😉
Ha! That I have to use!
Yes, the desperation is palpable now.
Spring, which historically starts on 21 March, has made many early but short appearances in the UK over the winter months as is perfectly normal but it does depend whereabouts you are observing as to what the local stuff is doing.
That is what makes us such an interesting and idyllic bunch of islands where you can very seldom be certain about anything weather wise until much closer to when it happens. .We are due a thundery summer but, like buses, the weather has its own unique ideas on what the real timetable says.
21st of march? First off that’s hemispherist.
That’s the astronomical date, merely because it’s the equinox. If you believe that, then summer starts on midsummer day, and winter only just before Christmas (in the northern hemisphere). That’s patently not the case.
The usual Northern hemisphere date used by people who actually study weather, instead of celestial mechanics, is the 1st of March.
I thought they claimed gas stoves caused that?
Oh wait! That was asthma. Never mind!