- January 10, 2022
- Swisens
Pollen becomes an issue every year. At the latest in spring and certainly in summer when the birches and grasses start producing pollen. Area-wide pollen monitoring in Europe has been underway in the individual states for decades. However, nationwide, automatic real-time pollen monitoring in Europe is still in its infancy. Thanks to individual pioneering projects such as the Swiss Automated Pollen Network, real-time pollen data are already publicly available today. In this article, we show the real-time pollen information generated by our measuring systems within Europe that has been made public to date.
Real-time pollen monitoring in Switzerland
Since the beginning of the birch blossom this year, data from five SwisensPoleno monitoring stations in Switzerland are available online. MeteoSwiss provides the data in real time. Once an hour, the measured concentrations are automatically transmitted. Even though the first data is already being measured, the network for automatic pollen measurement is currently still under construction. From 2022, up to 20 measuring stations are to provide real-time data in regular operation. In addition to 4 other pollen types, the hourly concentrations of the most important allergen pollens – birch, ash, grass – are available in real time on the MeteoSwiss website.
Measurement system: SwisensPoleno Jupiter
Location(s): Basel, Zürich, Buchs SG, Locarno, Payerne, Lausanne
Owner: MeteoSchweiz
Real-time pollen monitoring in the UK
Manchester-i provides the first real-time pollen information in the UK. Users can access live counts of tree and grass pollen. By default, pollen counts and the resulting allergenic load of the last 24 hours are displayed in hourly resolution. Users can adjust the time range and resolution in the fields of the graphs according to their needs.
Measurement system: SwisensPoleno Jupiter
Location: Urban Observatory University of Manchester
Owner: University of Manchester
Real-time pollen monitoring in Finland
The Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has recently started publishing real-time pollen data for Helsinki, Finland. In addition, FMI provides a graph of real-time concentrations of coarse aerosol particles, broken down by size. This enables a new perspective on the air surrounding us that was not possible before – a worlds first.
Real-time pollen concentrations:
Real-time coarse aerosols concentrations:
Measurement system: SwisensPoleno Jupiter
Location: Finnish Meteorology Institute, Helsinki
Owner: Finnish Meteorology Institute
Real-time pollen monitoring in Lithuania
Since spring 2022, real-time poll data has been published in the capital of Lithuania. In Vilnius, a SwisensPoleno Mars is located on the roof of the Vilnius University and provides data to the local platform miestiplauciai.vilnius.lt.
Real-time pollen concentrations:
Measurement system: SwisensPoleno Mars
Location: Vilnius University
Owner: Vilnius University
Further projects with real-time pollen monitoring in Europe
The EUMETNET programme “AutoPollen” is working intensively on real-time pollen monitoring in Europe. The AutoPollen programme aims to fully exploit the great potential offered by automatic pollen observations. It brings together a consortium from across Europe with the multidisciplinary expertise needed to address challenges along the entire information chain – from the actual observation to the final product defined for the end user.
Our complete solution for real-time pollen monitoring
From our point of view, automated real-time pollen monitoring in a regional or national network can be defined by the following features:
- Reliable and tested measurement principle.
- Continuous quality assurance
- Use of artificial intelligence for particle identification
- Extension of the identification algorithms to the local flora.
- Fully automatic operation and low maintenance
- Integrated data management of BigData
The solution is therefore not a single measuring system, but a network of components in the SwisensEcosystem Pollen Monitoring.
Further articles about pollen monitoring
The EUMETNET Autopollen Programme
Real-time Pollen Monitoring Using Digital Holography
