David García de León published with Herminia García-Mozo, Carmen Galán and Purificación Alcázar from University of Córdoba (Spain) and Mauricio Lima and José L. González Andújar from LINCGlobal (CSIC-PUC-UFRJ) a paper entitled “Disentangling the effects of feedback structure and climate on Poaceae annual airborne pollen fluctuations and the possible consequences of climate change” in Science of the Total Environment.

In this paper the authors present a novel approach to study long-term airborne pollen and model the long-term fluctuations of airborne Poaceae pollen. Pollen density in the previous year—unlike what used to be generally assumed—and maximum temperature drove Poaceae pollen levels. Increase of pollen levels up to 44.3% by 2070 in Southern Spain is predicted under climate change scenarios. Potential effects of this increase in pollen levels on allergy sufferers are discussed in the paper.