Abstract

Review of “Measurement report: Characterization of the vertical distribution of airborne Pinus pollen in the atmosphere with lidar-derived profiles: a modelling case study in the region of Barcelona, NE Spain” by Sicard et al.

Highlights

  • This paper investigates the mechanisms involved in the dispersion, structure and mixing in the vertical column of atmospheric pollen

  • The study focuses on 20 the predominant pollen type, Pinus, of the intense pollination event which occurred in the region of Barcelona, Catalonia, NE Spain, during 27 – 31 March, 2015

  • Conversion formulas are expressed to convert lidar-derived total backscatter coefficient and model-derived mass concentration into pollen grains concentration, the magnitude measured at the surface by means of aerobiological methods, and for the first time ever, a relationship between optical and mass properties of atmospheric pollen, through the estimation of the so-called specific extinction cross-section, is quantified in ambient conditions

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Summary

Introduction

Pollen is a very important biological structure present all over the world. It functions as a container in which the male gametophyte generation of the angiosperms and gymnosperms is housed (Moore and Weeb, 1983, Skjøth et al, 2013) and is responsible of the gene flow (Burczyk et al, 2004; Ellstrand, 1992; Ennos, 1994). Several works have studied the transport of pollen species in the atmosphere developing different numerical models and comparing the results with in-situ surface observations. Such models include a source term and a dispersion module. The objective of the paper is to improve our understanding of pollen vertical distribution in the atmosphere by combining in situ concentration (Hirst), columnar optical property (lidar) measurements and dispersion modelling. This work presents nested numerical simulations up to 1 km horizontal resolution of the dispersion of Pinus pollen in the 20 atmosphere which occurred during a 5-day pollination event in the region of Barcelona during 27 – 31 March, 2015 (Sicard et al, 2016a). The present journal paper is the first one of its kind studying the vertical structure of a pollen species by means of nested numerical simulations

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