I suffer from spring pollen. So reading this article did not make me happy. Also, I did not think of pollen when I think of Global Warming!
When Dr. Stanley Fineman started as an allergist in Atlanta, he told patients they should start taking their medications and prepare for the drippy, sneezy onslaught of pollen season around St. Patrick’s Day. That was about 40 years ago. Now he tells them to start around St. Valentine’s Day. Across the United States and Canada, pollen season is starting 20 days earlier and pollen loads are 21 percent higher since 1990 and a huge chunk of that is because of global warming, a new study found in Monday’s journal the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
nola.com
This is not the first study to show that the pollen season is longer and worse but it is the most comprehensive.
“This is a crystal clear example that climate change is here and it’s in every breath we take,” said lead author Bill Anderegg, a biologist and climate scientist at the University of Utah, who also has “really bad allergies.”
When the earth warms, spring comes earlier. Higher levels of carbon dioxide mean that plants produce more pollen.
his is clearly warming temperatures and more carbon dioxide putting more pollen in the air,” Anderegg said. Trees are spewing the allergy-causing particles earlier than grasses, he said, but scientists aren’t sure why that’s the case. Just look at cherry blossoms opening several days earlier in Japan and Washington, D.C., he said.
The study can be found here.
