Long-range transport of Ambrosia pollen to Poland

Smith, Matt; Skjøth, Carsten Ambelas; Myszkowska, Dorota; Uruska, A.; Puc, Małgorzata; Stach, Alicja; Balwierz, Zofia; Chłopek, Kazimiera; Piotrowska, Krystyna; Kasprzyk, Idalia; Brandt, Jørgen

doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2008.04.005

Cited by 117 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…3b). This identifies the Pannonian Plain as a potential source of Ambrosia pollen arriving in Copenhagen, and supports the work of Stach et al [14] and Smith et al [13] who showed that Ambrosia pollen arrives in Poland from the Pannonian Plain in the South. Ambrosia pollen concentrations decreased significantly on 6 September 2002 when air masses veered to the Southwest away from potential large sources of ragweed pollen.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

“…Back-trajectory calculations were conducted using the HYSPLIT model [24] following the methodology described by Stach et al [14] that is used as an indicator of potential source areas according to and subsequently used by Smith et al [13], Šikoparija et al [16] and Kasprzyk et al [6]. Input data to the HYSPLIT model is the reanalysis dataset provided by the NCEP covering the period 1948 -2010 with a spatial resolution of 2.5 degrees and 4 grid datasets per day.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been recognized that Ambrosia has spread across Europe from these major source areas during the last 10-20 years [8,9]. Each Ambrosia plant produces millions of pollen grains that are small (18-22 μm) [10,11,12] and can be transported long-distances to areas where the source plant is scarce or not even registered, such as parts of Poland [6,13,14], Italy [4,15], the Balkans [16], and as far as Scandinavia [17]. The high allergenic capacity of the ragweed pollen grains [18] means that small amounts of Ambrosia pollen can be important for allergy sufferers, although the clinical relevance of the long distance transport (LDT) of allergenic ragweed pollen remains unclear [19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Risk of exposure to airborne <i>Ambrosia</i> pollen from local and distant sources in Europe – an example from Denmark

Sommer¹,

Smith²,

Šikoparija³

et al. 2015

Ann Agric Environ Med.

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Background. Ambrosia artemisiifolia L. is a noxious invasive alien species in Europe. It is an important aeroallergen and millions of people are exposed to its pollen. Objective. The main aim of this study is to show that atmospheric concentrations of Ambrosia pollen recorded in Denmark can be derived from local or more distant sources. Methods. This was achieved by using a combination of pollen measurements, air mass trajectory calculations using the HYPLIT model and mapping all known Ambrosia locations in Denmark and relating them to land cover types. Results. The annual pollen index recorded in Copenhagen during a 15-year period varied from a few pollen grains to more than 100. Since 2005, small quantities of Ambrosia pollen has been observed in the air every year. We have demonstrated, through a combination of Lagrangian back-trajectory calculations and atmospheric pollen measurements, that pollen arrived in Denmark via long-distance transport from centres of Ambrosia infection, such as the Pannonian Plain and Ukraine. Combining observations with results from a local scale dispersion model show that it is possible that Ambrosia pollen could be derived from local sources identified within Denmark. Conclusions. The high allergenic capacity of Ambrosia pollen means that only small amounts of pollen are relevant for allergy sufferers, and just a few plants will be sufficient to produce enough pollen to affect pollen allergy sufferers within a short distance from the source. It is necessary to adopt control measures to restrict Ambrosia numbers. Recommendations for the removal of all Ambrosia plants can effectively reduce the amount of local pollen, as long as the population of Ambrosia plants is small.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Risk of exposure to airborne <i>Ambrosia</i> pollen from local and distant sources in Europe – an example from Denmark

Sommer¹,

Smith²,

Šikoparija³

et al. 2015

Ann Agric Environ Med.

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show abstract

“…It was shown that, although the features of each specific long-range transport episode vary widely, there may be a systematic pattern in the springtime pollen redistribution in Europe with prevailing transport directions, main source and receptor regions, etc. There have been several attempts to reveal such a pattern via a multiannual analysis (Damialis and Gioulekas, 2005;Siljamo et al, 2008aSkjøth et al, 2009Skjøth et al, , 2007Smith et al, 2008;Sofiev et al, 2006a;Yli-Panula et al, 2009) but the picture is still largely incomplete.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MACC regional multi-model ensemble simulations of birch pollen dispersion in Europe

et al. 2015

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Abstract. This paper presents the first ensemble modelling experiment in relation to birch pollen in Europe. The sevenmodel European ensemble of MACC-ENS, tested in trial simulations over the flowering season of 2010, was run through the flowering season of 2013. The simulations have been compared with observations in 11 countries, all members of the European Aeroallergen Network, for both individual models and the ensemble mean and median. It is shown that the models successfully reproduced the timing of the very late season of 2013, generally within a couple of days from the observed start of the season. The end of the season was generally predicted later than observed, by 5 days or more, which is a known feature of the source term used in the study. Absolute pollen concentrations during the seaPublished by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. M. Sofiev et al.: MACC regional multi-model ensemble simulations of birch pollen dispersionson were somewhat underestimated in the southern part of the birch habitat. In the northern part of Europe, a recordlow pollen season was strongly overestimated by all models. The median of the multi-model ensemble demonstrated robust performance, successfully eliminating the impact of outliers, which was particularly useful since for most models this was the first experience of pollen forecasting.

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“…García-Mozo et al 2008). The computation of backward trajectories is widely used (Skjøth et al 2009;Smith et al 2008), where the Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model (Draxler et al 2013) is one of the most used tools to explain atmospheric transport of pollen (e.g. Makra et al 2010;Zemmer et al 2012;Fernández-Rodriguez et al 2014;Sikoparija et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improvement in the accuracy of back trajectories using WRF to identify pollen sources in southern Iberian Peninsula

et al. 2014

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Airborne pollen transport at micro-, meso-gamma and meso-beta scales must be studied by atmospheric models, having special relevance in complex terrain. In these cases, the accuracy of these models is mainly determined by the spatial resolution of the underlying meteorological dataset. This work examines how meteorological datasets determine the results obtained from atmospheric transport models used to describe pollen transport in the atmosphere. We investigate the effect of the spatial resolution when computing backward trajectories with the HYSPLIT model. We have used meteorological datasets from the WRF model with 27, 9 and 3 km resolutions and from the GDAS files with 1°resolution. This work allows characterizing atmospheric transport of Olea pollen in a region with complex flows. The results show that the complex terrain affects the trajectories and this effect varies with the different meteorological datasets. Overall, the change from GDAS to WRF-ARW inputs improves the analyses with the HYSPLIT model, thereby increasing the understanding the pollen episode. The results indicate that a spatial resolution of at least 9 km is needed to simulate atmospheric flows that are considerable affected by the relief of the landscape. The results suggest that the appropriate meteorological files should be considered when atmospheric models are used to characterize the atmospheric transport of pollen on micro-, mesogamma and meso-beta scales. Furthermore, at these scales, the results are believed to be generally applicable for related areas such as the description of atmospheric transport of radionuclides or in the definition of nuclear-radioactivity emergency preparedness.

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Long-range transport of Ambrosia pollen to Poland

Cited by 117 publications

References 25 publications

Risk of exposure to airborne <i>Ambrosia</i> pollen from local and distant sources in Europe – an example from Denmark

Risk of exposure to airborne <i>Ambrosia</i> pollen from local and distant sources in Europe – an example from Denmark

MACC regional multi-model ensemble simulations of birch pollen dispersion in Europe

Improvement in the accuracy of back trajectories using WRF to identify pollen sources in southern Iberian Peninsula

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