An operational model for forecasting ragweed pollen release and dispersion in Europe
The development was based on Finnish Meteorological Institutes SILAM-model and concentrated on spatio-temporal modelling of ragweed flowering season and pollen release, which constitutes the emission term.
Model application to the seasons of 2005-2011 indicated the regions with high ragweed pollen concentrations, in particular the areas where allergenic thresholds are exceeded. It is demonstrated that, due to long-range transport of pollen, high-concentration areas are substantially more extensive than the heavily infested territories. Due to long range transport of pollen, allergy-relevant thresholds can be exceeded in all parts of Europe, including Scandinavia.
Evaluation of the new model against multi-annual ragweed pollen observations demonstrated that the model reproduces well the main ragweed pollen season in the areas with major plant presence, such as the Pannonian Plain, the Lyon area in France, the Milan region in Italy, Ukraine and southern Russia. The predicted start of the season is mostly within 3 days of the observed for the majority of stations in these areas. The temporal correlation between modelled and observed concentrations exceeds 0.6 for the bulk of the stations.
More information:
Researcher Marje Prank, tel. 029 539 5403, marje.prank@fmi.fi
Prank M, Chapman D, Bullock J, Belmonte J, Berger U, Dahl A, Jäger S, Kovtunenko I, Magyar D, Niemelä S, Rantio-Lehtimäki A, Rodinkova V, Sauliene I, Severova E, Sikoparija B, Sofiev M (2013), An operational model for forecasting ragweed pollen release and dispersion in Europe, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Volumes 182-183, 15 December 2013, Pages 43-53, ISSN 0168-1923