Brisbane and Gold Coast pollen season
South-east Queensland's grass pollen season starts in October and can run into autumn, with several peaks that follow summer rain. By total pollen it is Australia's biggest season: about three times the size it was in the 1990s, and about three times Melbourne's (Addison-Smith et al. 2021).
What makes it different from Melbourne
- Different grasses. Subtropical (C4) grasses such as Bahia grass, Paspalum, Rhodes grass and couch flower through the warm months, instead of one spring burst of ryegrass.
- Several peaks. Summer and autumn peaks are often bigger than the spring one. Counts follow rain: grass greens after a wet spell and flowers some weeks later (Green et al. 2002).
- Greenness leads pollen. Satellite greenness of grassland, a month or more earlier, explained 34-76 % of the variation in Brisbane's grass pollen (Devadas et al. 2018).
- About a third of days are High. In 2016-2020, about 32 % of Brisbane's counting days were High or above (AusPollen).
How SkyPollen estimates it
No published forecasting model exists for subtropical grasses, so this one is our own and unvalidated. The daily level combines the season window, the greenness of the grazing land inland of each city about five weeks earlier, the rain of two to four weeks earlier, and the day's weather (warm, dry, breezy days release more pollen; rain cuts it). Its size is set from the published Brisbane season index (median 10,850, 2016-2020) and the published share of High days. On the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, wind straight off the sea lowers the level; that part is our assumption, with no local count to check it.
Past seasons, re-run with the model
The model run over past seasons with NASA POWER weather for Brisbane. 2016/17 to 2019/20 set its size; the later seasons were not used to set anything.
| Season (Jul-Jun) | Season index | Peaks | High+ days, Nov-Mar |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016/17 | 14,678 | 3 | 50 % |
| 2017/18 | 14,531 | 2 | 40 % |
| 2018/19 | 7,169 | 3 | 33 % |
| 2019/20 | 6,641 | 1 | 5 % |
| 2020/21 | 8,246 | 2 | 18 % |
| 2021/22 | 10,834 | 2 | 43 % |
| 2022/23 | 22,568 | 4 | 72 % |
| 2023/24 | 10,016 | 2 | 27 % |
| 2024/25 | 10,635 | 2 | 35 % |
Seasons with two or more peaks, 2020/21 to 2024/25: 5/5. Seasons where a summer or autumn peak beat the spring one: 4/5. These are model runs, not counts.
Today
There is no official public pollen count for the Gold Coast or the Sunshine Coast. For asthma and hay fever advice see your doctor or Asthma Australia.