Incorporation of pollen data in source maps is vital for pollen dispersion models

Abstract

<jats:p>Abstract. 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 a land cover data and forest inventory, (2) a map obtained from land cover data and calibrated using model simulations and pollen observations, and (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. A total of 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. </jats:p>

Predicting the severity of the grass pollen season and the effect of climate change in Northwest Europe

“…We found that the grass SPIn varies from year to year and from station to station by a factor of 2 to 4. The SPIn has been used in atmospheric models to take into account the seasonal magnitude of pollen emission and its spatial and interannual variation for different pollen types (35,36). Therefore, our findings have the potential to be used in atmospheric dispersion models for Northwest Europe or larger regions throughout the world where sufficient robust pollen data are available.…”

Extension of WRF-Chem for birch pollen modelling—a case study for Poland

“…Validation of chemical transport models for birch pollen over Europe has been done by Sofiev et al (2015) and Kurganskiy et al (2020). Sofiev et al (2015) presented the results for six individual models and for the ensemble approach based on comparison of the modelled concentrations with stations located in 11 European countries for the year 2013.…”

“…The correlation coefficient (mean for all stations) for individual models varied from 0.28 to 0.41, while the mean from all models was equal to 0.38. Kurganskiy et al (2020) ran the Enviro-HIRLAM model over Europe and validated the results against stations located in Finland, Russia, and Denmark for the year 2006. They ran three types of simulations: (1) a standard run, (2) a run that includes a correction for 2-m air temperature based on observational data, and (3) a simulation that includes both the correction for temperature and a grid-based scaling factor for pollen emission based on pollen observations.…”

“…Our study presents the results for different years and configurations of observational stations than the study of Sofiev et al ( 2015 ) and Kurganskiy et al ( 2020 ). Therefore, we should not directly compare the statistics between these modelling results.…”

“…with SILAM (Sofiev et al 2015;Galán et al 2017;Sofiev 2019) and online approach, e.g. with COSMO-ART (Pauling et al 2012;Zink et al 2013) and Enviro-HIRLAM (Kurganskiy et al 2020).…”