Study: Human-generated ozone damages crops

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists said increasing ozone levels from the use of fossil fuels will damage global vegetation, seriously affecting the world's economy.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis focused on how three environmental changes associated with human activity -- increases in temperature, carbon dioxide and ozone -- will affect crops, pastures and forests.

The research showed increases in temperature and in carbon dioxide might actually benefit vegetation, especially in northern temperate regions. However, those benefits might be more than offset by the detrimental effects of increases in ozone, notably on crops. Ozone is a form of oxygen that is an atmospheric pollutant at ground level.

The researchers said the overall economic consequence will be considerable. According to the analysis, if nothing is done, by 2100 the global value of crop production will fall by 10 to 12 percent.

"Even assuming that best-practice technology for controlling ozone is adopted worldwide, we see rapidly rising ozone concentrations in the coming decades," said John Reilly, associate director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. "That result is both surprising and worrisome."

The report appears in the journal Energy Policy.