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Abstract:
Temperature is a crucial factor controlling changes in flowering phenology, and rising temperatures might disturb allergenic pollen biology across the northern hemisphere. Increases in pollen concentrations and the widespread advances and lengthening of pollen seasons across North America can be partially related to the observed warming. Water availability is a crucial factor regulating plant production and, therefore, inherently linked to flowering intensity, pollen concentrations, and season timing. These facts could have important implications for human health. For example, recent studies have highlighted the importance of increasing risks of allergic respiratory diseases in northern mid-latitudes related to earlier starting dates of spring pollen seasons due to climate change. In Mexico, suitable pollen data to estimate long-term changes are missing. There is only a limited amount of information covering some locations across Mexico City since 2008, showing a maximum in pollen concentration in 2010. Early work suggests that these maximum values might be related to the warm phase of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) 2009-2010. Notoriously, winter 2009/2010 was characterized by extreme cold and snow conditions in large regions of the Northern hemisphere related to an extreme event of the Arctic Oscillation (AO). In this work, we explore the impacts of ENSO and the AO on the oak pollen production in Mexico City, showing that a moderately warm phase of ENSO and an extreme AO event led to severe cold and wet weather in central Mexico during the winter of 2009-2010, conditions that could have favored pollen production and dispersal.
