By Anthony Watts and Sterling Burnett
Axios Atlanta recently published an article titled “Pollen season in Atlanta is getting worse, thanks to climate change,” claiming that rising temperatures caused by climate change are making allergy season more severe. Axios’ article is misleading at best, and misses a larger point. Data and historical trends indicate that while pollen levels fluctuate, factors like urbanization and land use changes—particularly the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect—are far more significant contributors to Atlanta’s pollen patterns than their so-called local climate change.
“A warming climate means that allergy season is starting earlier and lasting longer,” write Kristal Dixon and Alex Fitzpatrick for Axios. “Longer, warmer growing seasons are leading to earlier pollen releases and higher overall pollen levels.”
Dixon and Fitzpatrick ignore several key facts in their attempt to connect long-term climate change to longer allergy seasons. For example, Atlanta’s well-documented Urban Heat Island effect—caused by dense infrastructure, concrete, and asphalt trapping heat—plays a much larger role in local temperature trends than any global warming influence. The city has expanded significantly over the last few decades, increasing localized temperatures and extending the growing season for plants.
According to a NASA analysis of Atlanta’s UHI effect, the city consistently experiences significantly higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas due to human-made structures retaining heat. This localized warming—not global climate change—is a key driver of temperature-related shifts in pollen cycles.
Second, pollen levels are heavily influenced by regional vegetation patterns and CO₂ fertilization effects, which lead to healthier plant growth.
As pointed out in a Climate Realism article, pollen season is largely dependent on precipitation levels and natural climate variability, not just temperature. When there’s more rain, plants produce more pollen. Conversely, droughts can suppress pollen levels. Climate models do not reliably account for these local and regional factors, yet Axios presents the issue as if it is solely driven by global temperature changes.
Additionally, previous claims about worsening allergy seasons have not held up to scrutiny. For example, a 2022 Climate Realism analysis debunked similar assertions by showing that pollen trends vary by region and that some areas are actually experiencing less pollen, not more. Furthermore, studies cited in mainstream media often rely on cherry-picked data from limited time frames rather than examining long-term historical trends.
Axios embraced Climate Central’s use of “consecutive freeze-free days” as a proxy for pollen season noting that between 1970 and 2024 the number of consecutive freeze free days increased it cities like Reno, Myrtle Beach, and Toledo. Interestingly, it didn’t provide any data addressing whether incidences of treatment for allergies or sales of allergy medicine increased in those cities corresponding to the increase in days between and without freezing temperatures. And, despite climate change being a supposedly global phenomenon, it turns out the number of cities experienced a decline in the number of consecutive freeze free days, so the logical question to ask, did reported incidences of allergy attacks, or sales of allergy medicine, as a proxy, also decline. If Axios asked those questions it certainly provided no answer to them in the article, yet that is a reasonable connection to make if one is asking whether climate change is impacting allergies.
Even if climate change, as opposed to other factors, is causing longer allergy seasons, this misses a larger point, the positive benefits of a decline in freezing temperatures. The Axios story mentioned one in passing but failed to expand on it writing, “[a]bove-freezing temperatures allow for better plant growth.” While the suffering of allergy sufferers should not be ignored, as Axios notes, allergies are treatable, but fewer below freezing days and nights benefit plants, pollinating insects, and humans alike.
Climate Realism has made this point in repeated posts, here, here, and here, for example. Global greening has contributed to the largest decline in global hunger in history. Greater plant growth not only removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but the allergy causing pollen it emits is great for pollinating insects like bees, and birds.
More directly, copious peer reviewed reports confirm that cold temperatures are responsible for 10 times more deaths than hot temperatures. As a result, as the number of freezing days has declined, the number of deaths attributable to non-optimum temperatures has also fallen sharply, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. (See the table, below)
Instead of taking a broad, evidence-based approach, Axios in its attempt to connect worsening allergies to climate change it has once again resorted to alarmist claims without addressing all relevant factors. Atlanta’s allergy season is influenced by many variables, including land use changes, dense urban landscaping with pollen producing plants, increased green space, and urbanization. Blaming climate change without considering these other influences misleads the public and fosters unnecessary panic. If the media is truly interested in informing the public, they should focus on all contributing factors that might be causing a longer allergy season. They could also discuss the tremendous global net benefits of fewer freezing days.
