Advancing global-scale pollen emission modeling in the Community Earth System Model (CESM3)
Leung, D. M., Zhang, Y., Tilmes, S., Foster, A. C., Barth, M., et al. (2025). Advancing global-scale pollen emission modeling in the Community Earth System Model (CESM3).
| Title | Advancing global-scale pollen emission modeling in the Community Earth System Model (CESM3) |
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| Genre | Conference Material |
| Author(s) | Danny M. Leung, Yingxiao Zhang, Simone Tilmes, Adrianna C. Foster, Mary Barth, Louisa K. Emmons |
| Abstract | We implement a modeling scheme for global anemophilous (wind-driven) pollen emissions in the Community Earth System Model version 3 (CESM3). Anemophilous pollen is a type of primary biological aerosol particle (PBAP) that can trigger respiratory diseases such as allergic rhinitis (hay fever) and asthma, as well as impact cloud formation and regional precipitation. However, the sparsity of ground-based pollen counts/concentrations limits the estimation of pollen across space and time, and thus previous studies were typically limited to small spatial scales (e.g., in a single city or limited sites). To our knowledge, no existing modeling studies bridge modeling efforts across different continents and couple pollen emissions with climate and land use changes in a global ESM. To address this gap, we incorporate the Pollen Emissions for Climate Models (PECMv2) into the CESM3. Speciated pollen aerosols are emitted from the Community Terrestrial System Model (CTSM) and go through atmospheric processes in the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM). Pollen emissions depend on the CTSM plant growth and coverage as well as meteorological drivers like temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, and wind. CESM pollen emissions over North America show consistent spatial patterns with those in the offline PECM and other regional models, e.g., the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem). In a ~1° CESM global configuration, present-day pollen emission potential is globally estimated to be ~44 Tg/yr. The pollen emission model was initially calibrated based on the observations over North America and will be adjusted in other continents using available observations. The CESM pollen model will be used to investigate long-term pollen variability, examine pollen impacts on regional weather, and conduct pollen exposure assessments for public health research. |
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| Publication Date | Dec 18, 2025 |
| Publisher's Version of Record | |
| OpenSky Citable URL | https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76d5zhb |
| OpenSky Listing | View on OpenSky |
| ACOM Affiliations | MODELING, ACRESP |