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Tropospheric ozone (O3) is a global air pollutant that causes billions of dollars in lost plant productivity annually. It is an important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, and as a secondary air pollutant, it is present at high concentrations in rural areas far from industrial sources. It also reduces plant productivity by entering leaves through the stomata, generating other reactive oxygen species and causing oxidative stress, which in turn decreases photosynthesis, plant growth, and biomass accumulation. The deposition of O3 into vegetation through stomata is an important sink for tropospheric O3, but this sink is modified by other aspects of environmental change, including rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, rising temperature, altered precipitation, and nitrogen availability. We review the atmospheric chemistry governing tropospheric O3 mass balance, the effects of O3 on stomatal conductance and net primary productivity, and implications for agriculture, carbon sequestration, and climate change.
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Download all Supplemental Material as a PDF. Includes a link to Supplemental Video 1 (video embedded below); Supplemental Table 1: Agreements, goals and targets for controlling tropospheric and surface ozone; Supplemental Table 2: Changes in Rubisco transcript abundance, polypeptide content and enzyme activity in plants grown under chronic elevated ozone concentrations; and Supplemental Literature Cited.
Supplemental Video 1. This animation shows surface ozone images from real-time simulations of MOZART-4 available for chemical forecasts. Estimates of surface ozone concentrations are provided at 6 hr time intervals from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011. The Model for Ozone and Related chemical Tracers, version 4 (MOZART-4) is a global chemical transport model for the troposphere, driven by offline meteorology, and is fully described in Emmons et al. (2). These forecasts are driven by meteorology from National Centers for Environmental Prediction Global Forecast System and use fire emissions updated daily with MODIS fire counts (available from the University of Maryland). Download video file (MOV)