title: A numerical model of birch pollen emission and dispersion in the atmosphere. Model evaluation and sensitivity analysis.
abstract: An evaluation of performance of the System for Integrated modeLling of Atmospheric coMposition (SILAM) in application to birch pollen dispersion is presented. The system is described in a companion paper whereas the current study evaluates the model sensitivity to details of the pollen emission module parameterisation and to the meteorological input data. The most important parameters are highlighted. The reference year considered for the analysis is 2006. It is shown that the model is capable of predicting about two-thirds of allergenic alerts, with the odds ratio exceeding 12 for the best setup. Several other statistics corroborate with these estimations. Low-pollen concentration days are also predicted correctly in more than two-thirds of cases. The model experiences certain difficulties only with intermediate pollen concentrations. It is demonstrated that the most important input parameter is the near-surface temperature, the bias of which can easily jeopardise the results. The model sensitivity to random fluctuations of temperature is much lower. Other parameters important at various stages of pollen development, release, and dispersion are precipitation and ambient humidity, as well as wind direction.
authors.affiliation: Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Pilvi
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Siljamo
authors.forename: Mikhail
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sofiev
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Filatova
authors.forename: Łukasz
authors.initials: Ł
authors.lastname: Grewling
authors.forename: Siegfried
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jäger
authors.forename: Ekaterina
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Khoreva
authors.forename: Tapio
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Linkosalo
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ortega Jimenez
authors.forename: Hanna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ranta
authors.forename: Auli
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rantio-Lehtimäki
authors.forename: Anton
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Svetlov
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Veriankaite
authors.forename: Ekaterina
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Yakovleva
authors.forename: Jaakko
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kukkonen
mesh_terms: D001272:Atmosphere; D029662:Betula; D005060:Europe; D035264:Flowers; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011058:Pollen; D014887:Weather