Climate change is causing allergy seasons to last longer - Spectrum News 1
Climate change is causing allergy seasons to last longer
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As someone who needs to be outside for her dog walking and sitting business, Johanna Valine said this time of year makes it hard to do her job due to her — as she describes — insufferable allergies.
“My least favorite season for sure,” Valine said.
She’s suffered for years, Valine said, never finding relief for the most part when she lived in Los Angeles and now in Sacramento. She said that, like others, she’s tried the various allergy medicines, but to no avail.
“Allergy pills wouldn't work," she said. "So I would take something to help me sleep. And that was like the only relief I could get."
Unfortunately for Valine and everyone else who suffers from pollen-induced allergies, due to climate change, experts say allergy seasons are changing — and not for the better.
Jamie Kneitel is a professor of ecology at Sacramento State University — and an allergy sufferer himself.
“The past few springs have been especially tough on my eyes and itchy throat,” he said.
As Kneitel explained, research is showing the increase in the planet’s temperature is affecting plants.
“A lot of plants are flowering earlier, especially plants that, you know, contribute to allergies are flowering earlier," Kneitel said. "There tends to be an increase in pollen loads."
California is predicted, along with drought conditions brought on by climate change, to have atmospheric rivers become a more common occurrence and where most of the state’s water will come from. This, in turn, will affect plants.
“Rainfall and temperature can influence the amount of flowers being produced, the amount of pollen being produced," Kneitel said. "And that can have these consequences on us allergy sufferers.”
Now knowing this and giving up on over-the-counter medicine, Valine noted that she’s resorted to trying more natural remedies to alleviate her allergies.
“I'm hopeful. I'm definitely hopeful that this bee pollen is going to work," she said. "And so far, it's helped.”
Valine added that it hasn’t completely taken away her symptoms, but she said she’ll take any level of relief, especially if allergy seasons are going to get worse.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.