Published May 26, 2022 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Pollen season characteristics of Alder, Birch and Olive (1980-2020)

Creators

  • 1. Finnish Meteorological Institute

Contributors

Contact person:

Research group:

Supervisor:

Description

The clinically relevant pollen season characteristics (season start/duration/end) for Alder, Birch, Olives computed over Europe based on SILAM model retrospective analysis.

Abstract

Rising temperature leads to substantial changes in flowering season of European trees releasing large amount of allergenic pollen into the air. Some pollen proteins can exacerbate allergenic rhinoconjunctivitis (pollinosis) and allergic asthma by acting as antigens for the immune system. The most consistent signal is visible at the start of the season, the target variable of the current indicator. The starting of the pollen season is relevant also because patients are alerted in many regions by warning systems and mass media. Pollen season has many definitions, depending on the target use. The definition relevant in the current context is a so-called "Clinically-relevant" pollen season, i.e., the period when concentrations of the specific pollen are sufficiently high to cause allergy symptoms. The general definition and the concentration thresholds for several aeroallergens were identified as a result of a Task Force of European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (EAACI).

Methods

Calculation of the clinically-relevant seasons are performed in several steps by SILAM atmospheric composition model (http://silam.fmi.fi, open-source code http://github.com/fmidev/silam-model): 1. phenological season of trees is computed by SILAM based on the concept of accumulated heat as a period when a specific plant releases pollen into the atmosphere; 2. atmospheric dispersion of the released pollen is computed by SILAM, thus obtaining pollen concentration as a function of time all over Europe; 3. clinically-relevant seasons are calculated based on the SILAM-computed pollen concentrations as input; 4. the calculations are repeated independently for each year through 1980-2020 and each type of trees; 5. differences of the last/first decadal medians of the clinically-relevant season start day are calculated for each grid cell. Release into the air and atmospheric dispersion of pollen was computed by SILAM. Model computations have been made for 1980-2020 using the European meteorological Reanalysis ERA5. Each year is computed independently, with the same amount of pollen released as a seasonal integral. Spatial resolution was 0.1 degree lat-lon for the domain covering the whole Europe. Computations of clinically-relevant season follows the EAACI definition: start of season is the 1st day of 5 days – out of 7 consecutive days – each of these five days with concentration exceeding "daily mean concentration threshold" and with a sum of these five days exceeding "5-days pollen concentration threshold". The numerical constants for concentration thresholds were used as follows ("pollen" - "1day cnc_threshold" / "5-days cnc_threshold" in [pollen/m3] ): Alder - 3/30; Birch - 10/100; Olive - 20/200. Upon completion, the clinically-relevant season start, end, and duration (in calendar days) were computed from daily pollen concentrations for each grid cell independently.

Technical info

Dataset contains 3 netCDF files (Alder, Birch, Olive) with multiyear pollen season characteristics computed over Europe for 1980-2020.

Files

Files (434.0 MB)

Name Size Download all
Checksum: md5:65e9165e04b5b12217a2cb6a0676e9bc

PID: http://hdl.handle.net/11304/caa6c03d-1d5b-4bef-948e-f5dceddadaf1
144.7 MB Download
Checksum: md5:2b79140bec2a471b269e8b97cc9af114

PID: http://hdl.handle.net/11304/4aa6a82f-0097-4685-ad57-65fc6d09977b
144.7 MB Download
Checksum: md5:f793757f05d42837e15bc5d78e717d4d

PID: http://hdl.handle.net/11304/6073087c-1b9c-4b62-974a-0691464c8fc0
144.7 MB Download

Additional details

Identifiers

URL
https://etsin.fairdata.fi/dataset/831ba437-5c3b-4336-9110-4ac4a4d1dc31
b2rec
bf9996097e3e409caead72232c1c25eb

Instruments

System for Integrated modeLling of Atmopsheric coMposition SILAM
undefined (Other)

FMI metadata

Source data
SILAM based computations of multiyear pollen season characteristics over Europe for 1980-2020 on lat-lon grid with horisontal resolution approx. 10 km.
Parameter
  • Parameter name: start of pollen season
  • Parameter unit: days since the beginning of the calendar year
  • Parameter description: seasonStart
  • Parameter name: length of pollen season
  • Parameter unit: days
  • Parameter description: seasonLen
  • Parameter name: end of pollen season
  • Parameter unit: days since the beginning of the calendar year
  • Parameter description: seasonEnd
Data levels (meter, hectoPascal, degree, sigma pressure levels, other) in vertical direction(+/-) for example 1500 m or 850 hPa
  • Level: meter
Resolution
2
Topic category
environment

Temporal Coverage

Ranges:

Start date: 1979-12-31
End date: 2020-12-31

Locations

European domain Envelope:
(Lon: 72.0, Lat: -25.0 )
(Lon: 30.0, Lat: 45.0 )