Mitigating climate change and ozone pollution will improve Chinese food security

Li, Shouxiu and Gao, Yang and Zhang, Junxi and Hong, Chaopeng and Zhang, Shaoqing and Chen, Deliang and Wild, Oliver and Feng, Zhaozhong and Xu, Yansen and Guo, Xiuwen and Kou, Wenbin and Yan, Feifan and Ma, Mingchen and Yao, Xiaohong and Gao, Huiwang and Davis, Steven J. (2024) Mitigating climate change and ozone pollution will improve Chinese food security. One Earth, 8: 101166. pp. 1-14. ISSN 2590-3322

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Abstract

Competition for land, partly driven by the trade-off between ensuring sufficient food production and expanding forest carbon sinks, intensifies the challenge of addressing climate change. This issue is further exacerbated by damage to plant stomata from ground-level ozone, reducing crop yields. Stomatal opening is regulated by meteorological processes that may change significantly under warming climate, but this effect has been largely overlooked in prior studies of crop ozone damage. Here, we show historical crop losses across China are 39 Tg annually, valued at roughly $15 billion. In a scenario where carbon emissions reach net zero in 2060, projected crop production losses could decline most, enough to provide an additional 87,000 kcal per capita in China, or enabling a net absorption of 22 million tons of CO2 annually through reverting surplus cropland to natural ecosystems. Our findings provide policy-relevant information to support continued efforts toward strict pollution control and climate mitigation.