Hack, cough, and sneeze…allergy season is getting longer (thank you changing climate).
The headline that was in my inbox earlier this week pretty well sums up this entire blog.
“Allergy season is ‘earlier, longer and worse’ in these US cities, report finds.”
If droughts, floods, cold snaps, and heat stress weren’t enough, now it seems we get to deal with a longer, more intense allergy season. The good news just keeps on coming, doesn’t it?
The story focuses on a report that analyzed the temperature data for 203 U.S. cities and determined that the freeze-free has season lengthened by more than two weeks (15 days) on average since 1970. This means that for the millions of Americans that suffer from seasonal allergies to pollen and mold, climate change is bringing an earlier, longer, and overall worse allergy season. This mirrors an earlier report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that said climate change will potentially lead to shifts in precipitation patterns, more frost-free days, warmer seasonal air temperatures, and more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. These changes can affect when the pollen season starts and ends and how long it lasts each year, how much pollen plants create and how much is in the air, how pollen affects our health (the “allergenicity” of pollen), how much pollen we’re exposed to, and our risk of experiencing allergy symptoms.
And just in case you think this only applies to folks with allergies, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) also has determined this change is happening with potential impacts on agriculture and other studies have shown what this can mean for weed competition in crops and the range of certain harmful insects (I have written about the bugs before in an earlier blog and you can find another study on climate change and agriculture insect pests here).
All this adds up to new challenges for all of us, whether we are hacking and sneezing due to a more severe allergy season or fighting more aggressive weeds and bugs that we have never had to deal with before. As with so many of the impacts of climate change, this change in weather and temperature patterns won’t simply go away with time. We need to be prepared for its effect and have at least some kind of strategy as to how to deal with it.
When it comes to allergies, the CDC has some great tips for how to best reduce your exposure to pollen and other allergens. With pests and agriculture, you can contact your local cooperative extension service office (you can find a list of offices for Oklahoma here, Texas here, and Kansas here), or you can visit your local USDA Service Center or talk to your local crop or animal health advisor.
Regardless of what course of action you take, you need to give some serious thought as to how to get ahead of these challenges, because more than likely it will only get worse as the climate continues to change.
To read this post at the Southern Plains Perspective, click here.
