New sensor monitoring Leicester’s pollen count in real time

Dr Symon said: “So what we have seen is there has been a small peak in the morning, then pollen has tailed off and then really ramped up, gone really high in the evening.

“What we didn’t realise is that this continues into the night.

“So we have seen grass pollen levels high enough to cause symptoms, continuing overnight which we weren’t aware of because the old method just didn’t allow us to track that.”

And along with daily data, external, the Jupiter gives information on longer term trends.

Professor of environmental epidemiology, Anna Hansell, said Leicester had 50 years of atmospheric data to inform new readings

“It has been getting warmer over that period.

“The pollen seasons are starting earlier and they are going on for longer, so people are being exposed to pollen for longer and are getting hay fever for longer.

“We are seeing some really high peaks when you get warmer weather like in the past couple of weeks.

“Our pollen forecasts are based on the current levels and the weather but as the weather changes we are going to have to change those models.

“We have some suggestions that plants might not keep producing more and more pollen, they might just get to a level and stop and adjust to climate change, so we will have to keep a really close eye on that because that will affect how we forecast.”