Long-term evolution of the impacts of ozone air pollution on agricultural yields in Europe: a modelling analysis for the 1990-2010 period

The evolution of potential detrimental impacts of ozone pollution for wheat crop yields over Europe over the 1990 — 2010 period is assessed on the basis of ozone exposure (using the Accumulated Ozone over a Threshold, AOT40) or ozone dose (using the Phytotoxic Ozone Dose, POD). Substantial decrease of exposure is found on average over Europe, leading to wheat crop yield losses being reduced from 18.2 % to 10.2 % between 1990 and 2010 according to AOT40 trends. However, because of compensation between opposite trends for ozone peaks and ozone background, but also because of trends in other environmental factors, the actual ozone dose does not change significantly. So that wheat crop yield losses derived with the POD metric are estimated to 14.9 % and 13.3 % in 1990 and 2010, respectively.