• Atmosphere
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2019

For the allergy patient who needs to know the situation about the extent of pollen risk, the National Institute of Meteorological Sciences developed a pollen forecasting system based on the Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling (CMAQ). In the old system, pollen emission from the oak was estimated just based on the airborne concentration and meteorology factors, resulted in high uncertainty. For improving the quality of current pollen forecasting system, therefore the estimation of pollen emission is now corrected based on the observation of pollen emission at the oak forest to better reflect the real emission pattern. In this study, the performance of the previous (NIMS2014) and current (NIMS2016) model system was compared using observed oak pollen concentration. Daily pollen concentrations and emissions were simulated in pollen season 2016 and accuracy of onset and end of pollen season were evaluated. In the NIMS2014 model, pollen season was longer than actual pollen season; The simulated pollen season started 6 days earlier and finished 13.25 days later than the actual pollen season. The NIMS2016 model, however, the simulated pollen season started only 1.83 days later, and finished 0.25 days later than the actual pollen season, showing the improvement to predict the temporal range of pollen events. Also, the NIMS2016 model shows better performance for the prediction of pollen concentration, while there is a still large uncertainty to capture the maximum pollen concentration at the target site. Continuous efforts to correct these problems will be required in the future.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.221-233
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• 2015

Pollen is closely related to health issues such as allergenic rhinitis and asthma as well as intensifying atopic syndrome. Information on current and future spatio-temporal distribution of allergenic pollen is needed to address such issues. In this study, the Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling (CMAQ) was utilized as a base modeling system to forecast pollen dispersal from oak trees. Pollen emission is one of the most important parts in the dispersal modeling system. Areal emission factor was determined from gridded areal fraction of oak trees, which was produced by the analysis of the tree type maps (1:5000) obtained from the Korea Forest Service. Daily total pollen production was estimated by a robust multiple regression model of weather conditions and pollen concentration. Hourly emission factor was determined from wind speed and friction velocity. Hourly pollen emission was then calculated by multiplying areal emission factor, daily total pollen production, and hourly emission factor. Forecast data from the KMA UM LDAPS (Korea Meteorological Administration Unified Model Local Data Assimilation and Prediction System) was utilized as input. For the verification of the model, daily observed pollen concentration from 12 sites in Korea during the pollen season of 2014. Although the model showed a tendency of over-estimation in terms of the seasonal and daily mean concentrations, overall concentration was similar to the observation. Comparison at the hourly output showed distinctive delay of the peak hours by the model at the 'Pocheon' site. It was speculated that the constant release of hourly number of pollen in the modeling framework caused the delay.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 2017

The aim of this study is to evaluate the accuracy and variability of the oak pollen concentrations over the Seoul metropolitan region (SMR) simulated by the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ)-based pollen dispersion model, which is the CMAQ-pollen model integrated with the improved oak pollen emission model(PEM-oak). The PEM-oak model developed is based on hourly emission flux parameterization that includes the effects of plant-specific release, meteorological adjustment, and diurnal variations of oak pollen concentrations. A 33 day-run for oak pollen simulation was conducted by the CMAQ-pollen model with a 3 km spatial resolution for the SMR during the 2014 spring pollen season. Modeled concentrations were evaluated against the hourly measurements at three Burkard sampling sites. Temporal variations of oak concentrations were largely well represented by the model, but the quantitative difference between simulations and measurements was found to be significant in some periods. The model results also showed that large variations in oak pollen concentrations existed in time and space and high concentrations in the SMR were closely associated with the regional transport under strong wind condition. This study showed the effective application of the CMAQ-pollen modeling system to simulate oak pollen concentration in the SMR. Our results could be helpful in providing information on allergenic pollen exposure. Further efforts are needed to further understand the oak pollen release characteristics such as interannual variation of the oak pollen productivity and its spatio-temporal flowering timing.