Temperate airborne grass pollen defined by spatio-temporal shifts in community composition

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Research via the DOI in this record.Grass pollen is the world’s most harmful outdoor aeroallergen. However, it is unknown how airborne pollen assemblages change across time and space. Human sensitivity varies between different species of grass that flower at different times, but it is not known whether temporal turnover in species composition match terrestrial flowering or whether species richness steadily accumulates over the grass pollen season. Here, using targeted, high-throughput sequencing, we demonstrate that all grass genera displayed discrete, temporally restricted peaks of incidence, which varied with latitude and longitude throughout Great Britain, revealing that the taxonomic composition of grass pollen exposure changes substantially across the grass pollen season.Natural Environment Research CouncilBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC

Predicting the severity of the grass pollen season and the effect of climate change in Northwest Europe

Allergic rhinitis is an inflammation in the nose caused by overreaction of the immune system to allergens in the air. Managing allergic rhinitis symptoms is challenging and requires timely intervention. The following are major questions often posed by those with allergic rhinitis: How should I prepare for the forthcoming season? How will the season's severity develop over the years? No country yet provides clear guidance addressing these questions. We propose two previously unexplored approaches for forecasting the severity of the grass pollen season on the basis of statistical and mechanistic models. The results suggest annual severity is largely governed by preseasonal meteorological conditions. The mechanistic model suggests climate change will increase the season severity by up to 60%, in line with experimental chamber studies. These models can be used as forecasting tools for advising individuals with hay fever and health care professionals how to prepare for the grass pollen season

SEASTAR: a mission to study ocean submesoscale dynamics and small-scale atmosphere-ocean processes in coastal, shelf and polar seas

High-resolution satellite images of ocean color and sea surface temperature reveal an abundance of ocean fronts, vortices and filaments at scales below 10 km but measurements of ocean surface dynamics at these scales are rare. There is increasing recognition of the role played by small scale ocean processes in ocean-atmosphere coupling, upper-ocean mixing and ocean vertical transports, with advanced numerical models and in situ observations highlighting fundamental changes in dynamics when scales reach 1 km. Numerous scientific publications highlight the global impact of small oceanic scales on marine ecosystems, operational forecasts and long-term climate projections through strong ageostrophic circulations, large vertical ocean velocities and mixed layer re-stratification. Small-scale processes particularly dominate in coastal, shelf and polar seas where they mediate important exchanges between land, ocean, atmosphere and the cryosphere, e.g., freshwater, pollutants. As numerical models continue to evolve toward finer spatial resolution and increasingly complex coupled atmosphere-wave-ice-ocean systems, modern observing capability lags behind, unable to deliver the high-resolution synoptic measurements of total currents, wind vectors and waves needed to advance understanding, develop better parameterizations and improve model validations, forecasts and projections. SEASTAR is a satellite mission concept that proposes to directly address this critical observational gap with synoptic two-dimensional imaging of total ocean surface current vectors and wind vectors at 1 km resolution and coincident directional wave spectra. Based on major recent advances in squinted along-track Synthetic Aperture Radar interferometry, SEASTAR is an innovative, mature concept with unique demonstrated capabilities, seeking to proceed toward spaceborne implementation within Europe and beyond

Strategic Landscape Monitoring and Information: towards Coordination of Remote Sensing in the Nordic Countries : Final Report from the NordLaM Project, 1999-2003

The use of remote sensing interacts in various ways with Nordic programmes for strategic landscape monitoring and the related activities. As yet these activities are established mainly within national contexts and as such there is little formal international coordination in the application of image data. The increasing national and international requirements for information and knowledge on landscapes and landscape changes, such as in connection to habitat and biodiversity, urges movement towards coordination in the use of data gathering methods including remote sensing. This report concludes a four year programme of activities examining the uses of image data within existing Nordic landscape monitoring work and developing possibilities for increased coordination in this area. Towards its goal the programme has seen broad participation from Nordic and other European landscape and related monitoring activities. The result represents groundwork to be picked-up by subsequent initiatives that can also form operational partnerships between Nordic monitoring activities