RESUMO
Allergic diseases, including respiratory conditions of allergic rhinitis (hay fever) and asthma, affect up to 500 million people worldwide. Grass pollen are one major source of aeroallergens globally. Pollen forecast methods are generally site-based and rely on empirical meteorological relationships and/or the use of labour-intensive pollen collection traps that are restricted to sparse sampling locations. The spatial and temporal dynamics of the grass pollen sources themselves, however, have received less attention. Here we utilised a consistent set of MODIS satellite measures of grass cover and seasonal greenness (EVI) over five contrasting urban environments, located in Northern (France) and Southern Hemispheres (Australia), to evaluate their utility for predicting airborne grass pollen concentrations. Strongly seasonal and pronounced pollinating periods, synchronous with satellite measures of grass cover greenness, were found at the higher latitude temperate sites in France (46-50° N. Lat.), with peak pollen activity lagging peak greenness, on average by 2-3weeks. In contrast, the Australian sites (34-38° S. Lat.) displayed pollinating periods that were less synchronous with satellite greenness measures as peak pollen concentrations lagged peak greenness by as much as 4 to 7weeks. The Australian sites exhibited much higher spatial and inter-annual variations compared to the French sites and at the Sydney site, broader and multiple peaks in both pollen concentrations and greenness data coincided with flowering of more diverse grasses including subtropical species. Utilising generalised additive models (GAMs) we found the satellite greenness data of grass cover areas explained 80-90% of airborne grass pollen concentrations across the three French sites (p<0.001) and accounted for 34 to 76% of grass pollen variations over the two sites in Australia (p<0.05). Our results demonstrate the potential of satellite sensing to augment forecast models of grass pollen aerobiology as a tool to reduce the health and socioeconomic burden of pollen-sensitive allergic diseases.
RESUMO
This study examines the spatio-temporal trends obtained from decade long (Jan 2003-Dec 2014) satellite observational data of Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) on carbon monoxide (CO) concentration over the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) region. The time sequence plots of columnar CO levels over the western, central and eastern IGP regions reveal marked seasonal behaviour, with lowest CO levels occurring during the monsoon months and the highest CO levels occurring during the pre-monsoon period. A negative correlation between CO levels and rainfall is observed. CO vertical profiles show relatively high values in the upper troposphere at â¼200 hPa level during the monsoon months, thus suggesting the role of convective transport and advection in addition to washout behind the decreased CO levels during this period. MOPITT and AIRS observations show a decreasing trend of 9.6 × 1015 and 1.5 × 1016 molecules cm-2 yr-1, respectively, in columnar CO levels over the IGP region. The results show the existence of a spatial gradient in CO from the eastern (higher levels) to western IGP region (lower levels). Data from the Census of India on the number of households using various cooking fuels in the IGP region shows the prevalence of biomass-fuel (i.e. firewood, crop residue, cowdung etc.) use over the eastern and central IGP regions and that of liquefied petroleum gas over the western IGP region. CO emission estimates from cooking activity over the three IGP regions are found to be in the order east > central > west, which support the existence of the spatial gradient in CO from eastern to the western IGP region. Our results support the intervention of present Indian government on limiting the use of biomass-fuels in domestic cooking to achieve the benefits in terms of the better air quality, household health and regional/global climate change mitigation.