Modelling of birch pollen concentra2ons using EnviroHIRLAM Alexander Kurganskiy 1,2* , Alexander Mahura 3 , Roman Nuterman 1 , Alix Rasmussen 3 , Alexander Baklanov 3,4 , Sergei Smyshlyaev 2 , Eigil Kaas 1 1 Niels Bohr Ins.tute of University of Copenhagen (NBI, UC), Copenhagen, Denmark 2 Russian State Hydrometeorological University (RSHU), St. Petersburg, Russia 3 Danish Meteorological Ins.tute (DMI), Copenhagen, Denmark 4 World Meteorological Organiza.on (WMO), Geneva, Switzerland INTRODUCTION Inves.ga.on of temporal and spa.al evolu.on of pollen has a high interest, especially from a medical point of view. Birch pollen is the most common aeroallergen. About 20% of popula.on in Europe suffers allergenic reac.ons from pollen, and this number is constantly increasing. Therefore, people suffered to allergenic diseases (such as rhini.s) need to know: where and when there will be high pollen concentra.on. For this reason, a module for forecas.ng of birch pollen concentra.ons has been developed as a part of EnviroHIRLAM modeling system, and used in opera.onal mode for several years. The latest version of the model presented here includes growing degree hour parameteriza.on for start of flowering season, birch forest spa.al distribu.on, birch pollen emissions from local sources, dry and wet deposi.on processes for pollen par.cles in the atmosphere. MODELLING DOMAINS Figure 1. P15 domain covering a large part of Europe with Denmark in the center. Figure 2. T15 domain covering the NorthWest Russia, a part of Finland, Sweden, Belarus and Bal.c States. Domain T15 Horiz. resolu.on 0.135° Grids (lon x lat) 118 x 118 Ver.cal levels 40 Domain P15 Horiz. resolu.on 0.15° Grids (lon x lat) 154 x 148 Ver.cal levels 40 MODEL RESULTS VS. OBSERVATIONS Figure 6. Birch pollen concentra.ons observed (red) vs. modelled (green) at Finnish sites: Turku (60°32‘ N and 22°28‘ E) (fig. 6a), and Helsinki (60°10‘ N and 24°54‘ E) (fig. 6b). Figure 5. Birch pollen concentra.ons observed (red) vs. modelled (green) at Danish sites: Copenhagen (55°43’ N and 12°34’ E) (fig. 5a), and Viborg (56°27‘ N and 9°24’ E) (fig. 5b). 6a 6b 5a 5b Model runs performed for spring of 2006 METHODOLOGY: MODEL AND DATA EnviroHIRLAM (Environment High Resolu.on Limited Area Model) is onlinecoupled numerical weather predic.on and atmospheric chemistry transport modelling system. The model includes chemical, aerosol and pollen species. Schema.c descrip.on of birch pollen forecas.ng system is shown in figure 3. Birch forest habitat maps (fig. 4) have been derived for both modelling domains (fig. 1,2). The maps are result of combining and processing of three GIS databases: Global Land Cover (GLC) (landcover.usgs.gov/glcc/), European Forest Ins.tute (EFI) (Päivinen et al. 2001), and Tree Species Inventory (TSI) (Skjøth et al. 2008). Model results are shown in fig. 5,6. Figure 3. EnviroHIRLAM birch pollen forecas.ng system. Figure 4. Procedure of deriving birch forest maps for P15 and T15 domains. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are thankful to Dr. Carsten Ambelas Skjøth (University of Worcester, Na.onal Pollen and Aerobiological Research Unit) for providing tree species inventory data, European Forest Ins.tute (EFI) for broadleaved forest data, Prof. Mikhail Sofiev (Finnish Meteorological Ins.tute), Dr. Annika Saarto (Aerobiological Unit at University of Turku) and Danish Asthma Allergy Associa.on for birch pollen observa.on data, Dr. Suleiman Mostamandy (RSHU) for help in gejng Met. IC/BC data. REFERENCES Päivinen, R., Lehikoinen, M., Schuck, A., Häme, T., Väätäinen, S., Kennedy, P., and Folving, S.: Combining Earth Observa.on Data and Forest Sta.s.cs, Research Report, 14, 101 p., EFI, Joensuu and Joint Research Centre / European Commission, 2001. Skjøth, C. A., Geels, C., Hvidberg, M., Hertel, O., Brandt, J., Frohn, L. M., Hansen, K. M., Hedegaard, G. B., Christensen, J., and Moseholm, L.: An inventory of tree species in Europe an essen.al data input for air pollu.on modelling, Ecol. Model., 217, 292304, 2008. *CONTACT Alexander Kurganskiy email: [email protected] GIS processing P15 T15 Global Land Cover (GLC, 1x1 km) Frac.on of birch forest in broadleaved forest (TSI, 50x50 km) Broadleaved forest (EFI, 1x1 km) source: edc2.usgs.gov/glcc/eurasia_img.php source: www.efi.int Finland North – West Russia Belarus Bal.c States Sweden Denmark Germany Poland France UK Spain Italy Sweden Norway Phenological data Birch forest map Met. IC/BC (ECMWF IFS) Meteorology Emissions Transport Diffusion Dry deposition Scavenging Birch pollen concentration Eields INPUT DATA EnviroHIRLAM OUTPUT