Add fine Chardonnay to the victims of global warming. A new study indicates that climate change could cause a precipitous decline in the quality of top wines in the United States.
To date, assessments of the effects of global warming on U.S. agriculture in the coming century have suggested mild impacts on many crops, including wine grapes. But these studies have relied on global climate models that don't accurately gauge what will happen on a local scale. Premium wine grapes require a delicate balance of climatic conditions--not too hot, not too cold, and no extreme swings in daily temperature. Digging into the details, a team led by ecological modeler Michael White of Utah State University in Logan and climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, fired up a climate simulation for the continental U.S.
The simulation revealed local bumps in temperature that were not picked up by the broader climate models. Over the next century, these bumps prove catastrophic for premium grape harvests. When the team looked at regions that typically produce a premium harvest just once or twice every 24 years, for example, a significant bump in the number of days above 35° Celsius slashed the total area for growing the best grapes by a startling 81%. For regions that consistently produce a premium crop every year, the acreage was cut by 60%.
California, which accounts for 90% of the country's wine grape production, was particularly hard hit with just a narrow strip of premium-grape growing territory along the coast remaining by 2071 to 2099. Much of the U.S.'s remaining high-quality acreage shifted northward: the Pacific Northwest and the northeast stand to gain a healthy amount of premium grape-growing property. But don't rush out and buy a vineyard in Washington or New York just yet, the authors warn. Their study only looked at temperature and didn't account for other important factors such as humidity and precipitation, which may continue to be problematic for wine grapes grown in wet northern areas. The team reports its findings online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The results of this study are more dire than other studies on the impact of climate change on wine grapes," says ecologist Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California. "I think there is a growing appreciation of the fact that we experience climate change on a very local scale." Field hopes the study provides some incentive for people to do something about climate change. Wine connoisseurs in particular may want to raise a glass to getting more involved.
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