Pollen can actually influence the weather, new study suggests

Pollen can actually influence the weather, new study suggests

It has been found that pollen might be the key to how rain is started instead of just causing allergies.

Allergies are known to bring pain to many people at a time of the year when pollen comes around. Well, researchers have found out that pollen might have a lot more to do than just give someone a painful experience with an allergic reaction.

Researchers from Texas A&M and the University of Michigan are suggesting that these tiny particles might influence the climate with rain. Since pollen has mostly been ignored due to the fact that more research has been spent on believing that man made aerosols cause pollution, which leads to hotter temperatures and resulting in global warming, the finding that pollen might actually cause rain has been a huge surprise.

Allison Steiner, who is an associate professor of atmospheric, oceanic, and space sciences from the University of Michigan, said that pollen “grains were thought to be too large to be important in the climate system.” Steiner added that pollen was “too large to form clouds or interact with the sun’s radiation.” Additionally, Steiner said that pollen particles are too large and don’t last in the atmosphere as they settle too quickly.

Steiner in contrast to popular belief that pollen broke into tiny particles whenever it comes into contact with water vapor, said that pollen, instead, absorbs the water and ends up acting like a seed particle for clouds.  In other words, through research, it was found that pollen absorbs water vapor from the air and goes up into the atmosphere to eventually gather into clouds and release this absorbed water.

Researchers tested this by getting pollen from known allergic plants that included pecan, cedar, pine trees, oak, birch, and ragweed. Two grams of pollen from respective plants were soaked in water for an hour and, later, made into a spray of pollen fragments that was produced from an atomizer. After, the spray was sent into a cloud-making chamber. This was done at a laboratory that belonged to Sarah Brooks, who is a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M and a co-author on this research paper.

The researchers witnessed the pollen particles turned into spray began to pull in moisture from the air and began to form clouds.  The different types of pollen acted the same which researchers concluded that these different types of pollen have similar materials.

Pollen is known to affect up to 20 percent of Americans with allergies. It is believed that thunderstorms cause pollen to break into smaller materials and cause more severe cases of asthma attacks. That is why there have been phenomenon called thunderstorm asthma in which, after thunderstorms, hospitals get overly packed with patients suffering with severe cases of asthma.

Incidents like these have drawn attention from the health community, which later led to researching pollen even more. Now, researchers believe that moisture in the air could be causing pollen to break into even smaller particles, making cases of allergies more severe.

Additionally, researchers are beginning to think that trees released pollen so rain can come around more often to help trees and plants grow. This is a new take on how the climate works and pollen might be the key to everything.

So, when researchers were asked if planting more trees was the answer to solve droughts, researchers said that it is too soon to tell. More research has to be done to see how clouds react to pollen in the big picture or in a bigger scale than just an experimental cloud room at a university.

Researchers are still trying to figure out what makes a cloud tick. Also, these scientists are trying to figure out how aerosols influence cloud cover and precipitation under modern day climates and future climates.

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