Non‐linear loss of suitable wine regions over Europe in response to increasing global warming

• Published in: Global change biology Vol. 29; no. 3; pp. 808 - 826
• Main Authors: Sgubin, Giovanni, Swingedouw, Didier, Mignot, Juliette, Gambetta, Gregory Alan, Bois, Benjamin, Loukos, Harilaos, Noël, Thomas, Pieri, Philippe, García de Cortázar‐Atauri, Iñaki, Ollat, Nathalie, Leeuwen, Cornelis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2023; Wiley; John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subjects: Adaptation; adaptation to climate change; Bioclimatology; Biodiversity; Biodiversity and Ecology; Boundaries; climate; Climate Change; Ecology, environment; Environmental Sciences; Europe; evolution; fruits; Fuzzy logic; general circulation model; Geography; Global temperatures; Global Warming; Grapevines; Life Sciences; Pests; phenological model; phenology; Regions; risk; Temperature; Vitis; Vitis vinifera L; Water stress; Wine; winemaking; Wines; Europe; Vitis vinifera L; phenological model; general circulation model; adaptation to climate change; climate change; Adaptation to climate change; Climate change; General circulation model; Phenological model
• ISSN: 1354-1013; 1365-2486; 1365-2486
• DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16493

Evaluating the potential climatic suitability for premium wine production is crucial for adaptation planning in Europe. While new wine regions may emerge out of the traditional boundaries, most of the present‐day renowned winemaking regions may be threatened by climate change. Here, we analyse the future evolution of the geography of wine production over Europe, through the definition of a novel climatic suitability indicator, which is calculated over the projected grapevine phenological phases to account for their possible contractions under global warming. Our approach consists in coupling six different de‐biased downscaled climate projections under two different scenarios of global warming with four phenological models for different grapevine varieties. The resulting suitability indicator is based on fuzzy logic and is calculated over three main components measuring (i) the timing of the fruit physiological maturity, (ii) the risk of water stress and (iii) the risk of pests and diseases. The results demonstrate that the level of global warming largely determines the distribution of future wine regions. For a global temperature increase limited to 2°C above the pre‐industrial level, the suitable areas over the traditional regions are reduced by about 4%/°C rise, while for higher levels of global warming, the rate of this loss increases up to 17%/°C. This is compensated by a gradual emergence of new wine regions out of the traditional boundaries. Moreover, we show that reallocating better‐suited grapevine varieties to warmer conditions may be a viable adaptation measure to cope with the projected suitability loss over the traditional regions. However, the effectiveness of this strategy appears to decrease as the level of global warming increases. Overall, these findings suggest the existence of a safe limit below 2°C of global warming for the European winemaking sector, while adaptation might become far more challenging beyond this threshold. By coupling climate projections with phenological models for grapevine, we found that the change in climatic suitability for wine production in Europe is strongly non‐linear, as it significantly depends on the level of future global warming. Below the limit of 2°C of global warming, the suitable area loss over the traditional wine regions is relatively limited, that is around 4%/°C, and adaptation measures may be highly effective to cope with this loss. For a temperature increase above the limit of 2°C, the loss of suitable areas is more than four times faster and may lead to lose 17%/°C of the traditional wine regions