Earlier this year the Met Office warned that hay fever could get worse due to climate change. And it's not just a hypothetical problem we may face in the future. In a recent paper, researchers dug into pollen trends over the last 26 years across the UK, focussing on grass, birch and oak pollen, to investigate how changing weather patterns are already affecting hay fever season.
While the work showed that climate change is certainly having an effect, the exact changes depend on which kind of pollen you're affected by. The season for birch pollen (the second most important type when it comes to hay fever, after grass pollen), is increasing in severity - meaning the total amount of pollen seen during the season is higher.
Oak pollen season is also starting earlier and lasting longer. But there's some good news regarding grass pollen: while the first day with high grass pollen levels seems to be getting earlier, the season doesn't appear to be getting worse.
The data in the study only goes as far as 2020, but Dr Beverly Adams-Groom, lead author of the paper and senior palynologist at the University of Worcester, says those trends appear to be continuing.
"The birch pollen season this year and in 2021 were among the very worst that we've ever seen," she says.
Pollen is a fine powder made by plants as part of their reproductive cycle and hay fever is an allergic reaction to proteins found on the pollen when it gets into our eyes, nose and throat.
This story is from the August 2023 edition of BBC Science Focus.
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This story is from the August 2023 edition of BBC Science Focus.
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