Global impacts of surface ozone changes on crop yields and land use

Without a large decrease in air pollutant emissions, higher ozone concentrations could lead to an increase in crop damage of up to 20% locally in 2050 compared to the situation in which the changes in ozone are not accounted for. This may lead to a 2.5% global increase in crop area, and a regional increase of 8.9% in Asia. Implementation of air pollution policies could limit crop yield losses due to ozone to maximally 10% in 2050 in the most affected regions. Similar effects can be obtained as a result of co-benefits from climate policy (reducing ozone precursor emissions). We also evaluated the impact of the corresponding land-use changes on the carbon cycle. Under the worst-case scenario analysed in this study, future ozone increases are estimated to increase the cumulative net CO₂ emissions between 2005 and 2050 by about 3.7 Pg C, which corresponds to about 10% of baseline land use emissions over the same period.