Abstract
Climate change affects the reproductive life cycles of plants, including pollen production, which has consequences for allergic respiratory diseases. We examined climatic trends at eight locations in Bavaria, Southern Germany, with pollen time series of at least 10 years (up to 30 years in Munich). Climate change in Bavaria was characterized by a rise in temperature, but not during the winter. There is also a trend towards a more continental climate in Bavaria, which is significant in the Alps in the south of the territory. The influence of climate change depended on pollen type. Wind-pollinated arboreal species (e.g. Alnus, Betula and Cupressaceae/Taxaceae) showed advances in the start and end dates of pollen seasons and an increase in pollen load. These changes correlated negatively with late-winter (February) and spring temperatures (April). For herbaceous species, like Poaceae and Urticaceae, an earlier season was observed. Although precipitation is not a limiting factor in Southern Germany, water availability in the spring did influence the magnitude of grass pollen seasons. The effect of climatic change on the characteristics of pollen seasons was also more pronounced at higher altitudes, significant at > 800 m above sea level. Our results show that trends for start, end dates and intensity were similar at all locations, but only statistically significant at some. If we assume that earlier and more intense pollen seasons result in increases in prevalence and severity of allergic diseases, then the effect of climate change on public health in Bavaria may be significant.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the German weather services for the meteorological parameters. We thank the ZAUM team who managed the manual work for Biederstein 2003‑2018 and the ePIN network all over Bavaria in 2015: Christine Weil, Elke Bartusel, Cordula Ebner von Eschenbach, Gudrun Pusch, Robert Gebauer and Norbert Ertl. We thank the team of the German Pollen Information Service Foundation for the rest of the long time series of pollen data, and the Alpenklinik Santa Maria for pollen data from Oberjoch. A. Picornell was supported by a predoctoral grant financed by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport of Spain, in the Program for the Promotion of Talent and its Employability (FPU15/01668). We thank Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority (LGL), Munich, Germany for coordinating ePIN and coordinating the availability of the pollen data.
Funding
This study was funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection as project K3-8503-PN-18-26-D27432/2018 and the projects TKP01KPB-73815 and TKP01KPB-73813, and by the Bavarian State Ministry of Health and Care project AP-2460-ePIN-V11-U1-D44520/2018.
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Rojo, J., Picornell, A., Oteros, J. et al. Consequences of climate change on airborne pollen in Bavaria, Central Europe. Reg Environ Change 21, 9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01729-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01729-z