Kate Weinberger, a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Health Sciences at Mailman School of Public Health in Columbia University studying the effects of climate change on pollen, said studies have shown that wet and warmer winters have resulted in earlier and longer allergy seasons and that the past few stormy months may be a sign that allergy sufferers will soon need to reach for the antihistamines.
“There were all of these storms and there’s been a lot of tree growth,” Weinberger said of the severe winter. “[Scientists] are theorizing that because we’ve had a wet winter the pollen season will be worse.”
Additionally, allergy seasons are usually separated into distinct seasons, with trees causing problems in the spring and grasses causing issues in the summer. However, Weinberger said there is a chance that if the weather warms very quickly it could mean plants that normally bloom at different times over a period of weeks to months will bloom all at once.
“[Trees] need to experience a certain amount of heat over a certain period before they will start flowering, so if it stays colder in the spring it will be later when they reach the threshold,” Weinberger said. “People are speculating that everything is going to show up all at once [as the plants flower] in the warm temperatures.”
