Bioaerosols influence public health, climate dynamics and economy. Up to 30% of the global population now suffers from pollen allergies and asthma, a burden that has steadily intensified over recent decades and costs an estimated €50–150 billion annually to the public health system. Beyond human health, pollen and fungal spores also impair agricultural and forestry productivity, reducing crop yields and forest vitality. These challenges are further compounded by climate change, as rising temperatures and elevated CO₂ levels alter the life cycles of fungi and plants, leading to intensified pollen and spore emissions.

Accurate quantification of bioaerosols in different regions around the globe with markedly different emission patterns is therefore critical across a broad spectrum of research domains, including cloud-aerosol interactions and climate feedback, or public health responses to allergenic species. In response to these demands, bioaerosol monitoring is undergoing a paradigm shift that builds upon recent advances in novel automatic bioaerosol measurement techniques, including in situ monitoring, DNA-based and omics techniques and remote sensing, gradually replacing traditional manual methods. Nevertheless, significant technical challenges remain. Real-time methods with high temporal resolution often suffer from limited discriminatory power, whereas offline techniques provide rich taxonomic and physiological details but lack temporal resolution and struggle to yield absolute quantitative atmospheric concentrations. Furthermore, the emergence of this high throughput and taxonomically resolved techniques paves the way to advancing current modelling and forecasting capabilities for aeroallergens and raises further challenges in producing climatological time series that allow for assessing long term trends in bioaerosol concentrations and quantifying their response to climate change.

This session seeks to bridge these gaps by uniting interdisciplinary expertise in bioaerosol research. We invite contributions on novel detection methods and laboratory and field validation, indoor and outdoor ambient observations,  chemical composition detection, model development and forecasting, as well as exposure assessment and associated health impacts, including impacts of bioaerosol-air pollution interactions on all the above. Our goal is to foster cross-cutting dialogue that advances both fundamental understanding and practical monitoring capabilities.