Future impacts of ozone driven damages on agricultural systems

Current ozone (O3) concentration levels entail significant damages in crop yields around the world. The reaction of the emitted precursors (mostly methane and nitrogen oxides) with solar radiation contribute to O3 levels that exceed established thresholds for crop damage. This paper shows current and projected (up to 2080) relative yield losses (RYLs) driven by O3 exposure for different crops and the associated economic damages applying dynamic crop production and prices that are calculated per region and period. We adjust future crop yields in the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) to reflect the RYLs and analyze the effects on agricultural markets. We find that the changes (generally reductions) in O3 precursor emissions in a reference scenario would reduce the agricultural damages, compared to present, for most of the regions, with a few exceptions including India, where higher future O3 concentrations have large negative impacts on crop yields. The annual economic impact of O3 driven losses from 2010 to 2080 are, in billion US dollars at 2015 prices ($B), 5.0 6.0, 9.8 18.8, 6.7 10.6 and 10.4 12.5 for corn, soybeans, rice and wheat, respectively, with the large losses for wheat and soybeans driven by their comparatively high responses to O3. When O3 effects are explicitly modelled as exogenous yield shocks in future periods, there is a direct impact in future agricultural markets. Therefore, the aggregated net present value (NPV) of crop production would be reduced around by $90.8 B at a global level. However, these changes are not distributed evenly across regions, and the net present market value of the crops would increase by up to $118.2 B (India) or decrease by up to $59.2 B (China). © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

This research is supported by Basque Government through the BERC 2018–2021 and the Spanish Government through María de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714. This research is also supported in part by US Environmental Protection Agency , under Interagency Agreement DW08992459801 . Jon Sampedro, Dirk-Jan van de Ven and Iñaki Arto acknowledge financial support from the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain ( RTI2018-099858-A-100 and RTI2018-093352-B-I00 ). Jon Sampedro acknowledge financial support from the Basque Government ( PRE_2017_2_0139 ). Iñaki Arto acknowledge financial support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 821105 ( LOCOMOTION project). Agustin del Prado is financed by the programme Ramon y Cajal from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness ( RYC-2017-22143 )