László Makra (

Siklós Siklós ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=/, Šikloš, Шиклош) is the 4th largest town in Baranya county, Hungary. The Malkocs Bey Mosque was built by the order of the Malkoçoğlu family. Notable people *George Mikes, British author most famous ...

, 5 June 1952) is a

climatologist Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , ''-logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of study ...

and university professor. His main research area is pollen climatology and, within this, analysis of climatological relationships of

ragweed Ragweeds are flowering plants in the genus ''Ambrosia'' in the aster family, Asteraceae. They are distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas, especially North America,pollen, as well as relationship between ragweed pollen concentration and

respiratory disease Respiratory diseases, or lung diseases, are pathological conditions affecting the organs and tissues that make gas exchange difficult in air-breathing animals. They include conditions of the respiratory tract including the trachea, bronchi, bro ...

Career

László Makra graduated from high school in 1970 at

Komló Komló (, german: Kumlau, hr, Komlov) is a town in Baranya county, Hungary. The name of the settlement is derived from the local crop of hops (komló), an ingredient of beer. By the 18th century a depiction of this plant running up a support alre ...

, and then in 1971 enrolled at the József Attila University of Szeged, Faculty of Natural Sciences, reading mathematics and geography, and graduating in 1976. Afterwards he started working as assistant lecturer at the Department of Climatology of the university. From 1996 to 2015 he was associate professor at the same department and, since 2015, he has been working at the Faculty of Agriculture, Institute of Management and Rural Development of

Szeged University , mottoeng = Truth. Bravery. Freedom. , established = , type = Public research university , founder = Emperor Franz Joseph I , affiliation = European University Association, Science Without Borders, Confucius Institute , budget = US$220 m ...

, located in Hódmezővásárhely. In 2016, he became a full professor. He defended his university doctoral thesis in 1978 and PhD thesis in 1995, respectively. Later, in 2004 he was habilitated at the

University of Debrecen ThUniversity of Debrecen( hu, Debreceni Egyetem) is a university located in Debrecen, Hungary. It is the oldest continuously operating institution of higher education in Hungary ever since its establishment in 1538 by Suleiman the Magnificent f ...

. He spent several weeks on study tours in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

(

Yogyakarta Yogyakarta (; jv, ꦔꦪꦺꦴꦒꦾꦏꦂꦠ ; pey, Jogjakarta) is the capital city of Special Region of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, in the south-central part of the island of Java. As the only Indonesian royal city still ruled by a monarchy, ...

, 1989), China

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

, 1993;

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

(Canton), 1995] and the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

( Brno, 1996). He is a member of the editorial board of several Hungarian scientific periodicals, editor in an international scientific journal, member of the editorial board of seven international scientific journals, and is also committee member of the International Ragweed Society (2014- to date).

Research

His main research area is background aerosol and bio-aerosol and, within the latter, climatic relationships of pollen, i.e. pollen climatology. This is a relatively new area in the international literature and a completely new area in Hungary. His research activities within pollen climatology are as follows: pollen statistics; pollen transport modeling; pollen concentration forecast; analysis of the relationship between

s and pollen concentration;

climate sensitivity Climate sensitivity is a measure of how much Earth's surface will cool or warm after a specified factor causes a change in its climate system, such as how much it will warm for a doubling in the atmospheric carbon dioxide () concentration. In te ...

analysis of different taxa; as well as expected future pollen concentrations within the context of

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

Key results

He led successful instrumental field research expeditions into

Inner Asia Inner Asia refers to the northern and landlocked regions spanning North, Central and East Asia. It includes parts of western and northeast China, as well as southern Siberia. The area overlaps with some definitions of 'Central Asia', mostly the ...

( China,

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

in 1990 and 1994),

(

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

, Bali, 1996) and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

(

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, 1998) in order to determine the elemental composition of the regional background aerosol. The air samples collected by him and the data obtained were processed together with his colleagues at the Institute for Nuclear Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in

Debrecen Debrecen ( , is Hungary's second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the largest Hungarian city in the 18th century and ...

Main results of the expeditions

China expeditions (1990, 1994)

The high sulfur and

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element with the symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between them. Chlorine i ...

content of the regional aerosol is of natural origin (

rock salt Halite (), commonly known as rock salt, is a type of salt, the mineral (natural) form of sodium chloride ( Na Cl). Halite forms isometric crystals. The mineral is typically colorless or white, but may also be light blue, dark blue, purple, pi ...

Glauber's salt Sodium sulfate (also known as sodium sulphate or sulfate of soda) is the inorganic compound with formula Na2SO4 as well as several related hydrates. All forms are white solids that are highly soluble in water. With an annual production of 6 milli ...

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywal ...

), and it is a consequence of the widespread and intense salt accumulation in the outlet of the

Tarim Basin The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Northwest China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, China." Hydr ...

. Secondly the elemental ratios of Si/ Fe and Ca/Fe can be used as markers to track the long-range transport of aerosol coming from the

Takla Makan The Taklimakan or Taklamakan Desert (; zh, s=塔克拉玛干沙漠, p=Tǎkèlāmǎgān Shāmò, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Такәламаган Шамә; ug, تەكلىماكان قۇملۇقى, Täklimakan qumluqi; also spelled Taklimakan and Te ...

area resulting in the yellow wind phenomenon over the inner and eastern parts of China, and called the Kosa phenomenon over Japan, the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

and North America.

Indonesian expedition (1996)

Chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element with the symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between them. Chlorine i ...

, sulfur,

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

and chromium are substantially enriched in the atmospheric aerosol both over

and Bali; most of the chlorine is of oceanic origin (ocean mist) and the sulfur is partly of anthropogenic origin and partly comes from biogenic emissions of the ocean; and

and chromium probably originate from soils.

Pollen climatology

László Makra established the branch of pollen climatology in

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

. He is an internationally recognised researcher of the transport of particulate matter and bio-aerosol. He also identified the key source areas of long-range ragweed pollen transport arriving in the

Carpathian Basin The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large Sedimentary basin, basin situated in south-east Central Europe. The Geomorphology, geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewh ...

. He developed a procedure for separating long-range transport and regional transport of particulate matter and ragweed pollen, respectively. In addition, he determined the components of the transport, as well as the relative quantity of the net transport in the comprehensive and detailed maps of the quantitative and

phenological Phenology is the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation). Examples include the date of emergence of leaves ...

parameters of ragweed pollen for

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

, and with these phenological parameters he produced the first maps for the continent. He is the author or co-author of over three hundred scientific publications.

Major publications

*Enrichment of desert soil elements in Takla Makan dust aerosol (co-author, 2002) *Meteorological variables connected with airborne ragweed pollen in Southern Hungary (co-author, 2004) *Selections from the history of environmental pollution, with special attention to air pollution (co-author, 2004) *The history and impacts of airborne Ambrosia (Asteraceae) pollen in Hungary (co-author, 2005) *Airborne pollen in three European cities: Detection of atmospheric circulation pathways by applying three-dimensional clustering of backward trajectories (co-author, 2010) *Forecasting ragweed pollen characteristics with nonparametric regression methods over the most polluted areas in Europe (co-author, 2011) *Monitoring the long-range transport effects on urban PM10 levels using 3D clusters of backward trajectories (co-author, 2011) *Multivariate analysis of respiratory problems and their connection with meteorological parameters and the main biological and chemical air pollutants (co-author, 2011) *Assessment of the Daily Ragweed Pollen Concentration with Previous-Day Meteorological Variables Using Regression and Quantile Regression Analysis for Szeged, Hungary (co-author, 2011) *Trends in the characteristics of allergenic pollen circulation in Central Europe based on the example of Szeged, Hungary (co-author, 2011) *Association of allergic asthma emergency room visits with the main biological and chemical air pollutants (co-author, 2012) *Climate sensitivity of allergenic taxa in Central Europe associated with new climate change – related forces (co-author, 2013) *Characterizing and evaluating the role of different transport modes on urban PM10 levels in two European cities using 3D clusters of backward trajectories (co-author, 2013). *Predicting daily ragweed pollen concentrations using computational intelligence techniques over two heavily polluted areas in Europe (co-author, 2014) *Association of allergic rhinitis or asthma with pollen and chemical pollutants in Szeged, Hungary, 1999-2007 (co-author, 2014) *Ragweed in Eastern Europe. Invasive Species and Global Climate Change (co-author, 2014) *A new approach used to explore associations of current Ambrosia pollen levels with current and past meteorological elements (co-author, 2015) *Anthropogenic Air Pollution in Ancient Times. History of Toxicology and Environmental Health. Toxicology in antiquity. (2015) *The history of ragweed in the world (co-author, 2015) *Modelling the introduction and spread of non-native species: International trade and climate change drive ragweed invasion (co-author, 2016) *Biogeographical estimates of allergenic pollen transport over regional scales: common ragweed and Szeged, Hungary as a test case (co-author, 2016)

Guest editor

*International Journal of Environment and Pollution, Special Issue: „Air Pollution” (2007-2009).

Member of the Editorial Board

*Acta Climatologica et Chorologica, Universitatis Szegediensis (1995-); *International Journal of Biometeorology (2012); *Annals of West University of Timişoara, Series of Biology (Timişoara, Romania, 2013-); *Journal of Climatology (2013-); *Archives of Otolaryngology and Rhinology (2014-); *Science, Technology and Development (2015-); *Journal of Natural Products Research Updates (2015-); *Advances in Modern Oncology Research (2015-).Lists are from Curriculum Vitae, 2016
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Awards

*Széchenyi István Scholarship (2001) *“Pro Meteorology” plaque (2002)

References

External links

*Szegedi egyetemi almanach : 1921-1995. I. köt. (1996). Szeged, Mészáros Rezső. 559 p. Makra László biography see 362. p. in Hungarian
László Makra personal homepage
in Hungarian
Kiss Gábor Gergő: Interview with Laszlo Makra, "Délmagyarország", daily newspaper, 03. 08. 2014.
in Hungarian
László Makra, Curriculum Vitae, 2015
in English
CV, (SHORT) László Makra APPLICATION FOR FULL PROFESSORSHIP, 2015
in English
Google Scholar
in English and in Hungarian
CV, 2016
in English
Academia
in English
CV, 2015
in Hungarian

in Hungarian {{DEFAULTSORT:Makra, László Climatologists Hungarian geographers 1952 births Living people People from Baranya County University of Szeged alumni Academic staff of the University of Szeged