Pollen season starts with pollination in a specific area. Daily pollen counts are monitored, and different literature sources define it differently which make it confusing. For instance,
1. The sum-75 method
states that the season starts when the accumulated daily sum reaches 75
2. 1%, 2.5% and 5%
‘the date when the accumulated sum reaches 1%, 2.5% and 5% of the annual total.
However, pollen remain in the air after pollination period is over and are monitored. What is the most accurate definition of pollen season start and end date?
Looking forward for experts opinions
Regards
Muhammad Humayun
It really depends on what type of information you wish to capture. Definitely the most common method to estimate the start of the season is by using the retrospective 95% APIn (by removing 2.5% at the start and end of the season). However, this can only be done after the season is over, making it a poor method for in-season calculations.
Another option is to create pollen calendars based on multiple previous years and estimate the likely start of the season based on this, weather patterns and observations of the flora.
There are other methods that estimate the start of the season if a set of pollen concentrations are observed in multiple days in some type of interval. This is likely more accurate in terms of the medical health effects as a start of the season.
Thanks, Carl Alexander Frisk
The percent method loses data for low pollen count species for the dataset I am working with, and the daily pollen count for 5 days suits my dataset.
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