TY - JOUR
T1 - Precipitation intensity under a warming climate is threatening some Italian premium wines
AU - Di Carlo, Piero
AU - Aruffo, Eleonora
AU - Brune, William H.
N1 - Funding Information:
Many thanks to Francesco Paolo Valentini for providing the wine-grape harvest data, for giving access to the documents of the archives of his vinery and family, and for helpful discussion about wine and climate. We thank Mario Cerasoli and Antonio Iovino of the Centro Funzionale of the Abruzzo Region for providing the meteorological time series and for all the details about the meteorological stations, and Manuela Rastelli who helped in revising and improving the English of the manuscript. E.A.'s work was partially supported by DISPUTER research funds (ex-60%).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier B.V.
Copyright:
Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/10/1
Y1 - 2019/10/1
N2 - Changes in regional climate are causing disruptions in global agriculture, including wineries that produce premium wines. Temperature is the key factor influencing the growth stages of wine grapes worldwide and its recent increase is causing early harvests, affecting the quality and quantity of premium wine. Water availability is the other important element: during the growing season the crop yield benefits of constant moderate rains, whereas this positive effect would be reversed if the same precipitation amounts fell in short periods of time. Climate change may alter the characteristics of precipitation such as intensity, duration and frequency of rain even if it does not alter the total amount of precipitation. Although the impact of precipitation amount and drought on wine grape phenology have been investigated, knowledge of the role of precipitation characteristics is very limited. Here we show that the precipitation intensity, which is the precipitation amount divided by the number of the rainy days (NRD), has also caused early grape harvest dates for one grape varietal. Using the harvest dates (1820–2012) of a premium wine made by a winery that has kept the cultivation methods and practices unchanged since 1650, we found that for growing seasons since 1960, annual harvest dates have been getting early as temperature increases (−5.92 days °C−1) and more intense precipitation events occur (−1.51 days/(mm/NRD)). Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the increasing tendency of precipitation intensity could exacerbate the effect of global warming on some premium wines that have been produced for >400 years.
AB - Changes in regional climate are causing disruptions in global agriculture, including wineries that produce premium wines. Temperature is the key factor influencing the growth stages of wine grapes worldwide and its recent increase is causing early harvests, affecting the quality and quantity of premium wine. Water availability is the other important element: during the growing season the crop yield benefits of constant moderate rains, whereas this positive effect would be reversed if the same precipitation amounts fell in short periods of time. Climate change may alter the characteristics of precipitation such as intensity, duration and frequency of rain even if it does not alter the total amount of precipitation. Although the impact of precipitation amount and drought on wine grape phenology have been investigated, knowledge of the role of precipitation characteristics is very limited. Here we show that the precipitation intensity, which is the precipitation amount divided by the number of the rainy days (NRD), has also caused early grape harvest dates for one grape varietal. Using the harvest dates (1820–2012) of a premium wine made by a winery that has kept the cultivation methods and practices unchanged since 1650, we found that for growing seasons since 1960, annual harvest dates have been getting early as temperature increases (−5.92 days °C−1) and more intense precipitation events occur (−1.51 days/(mm/NRD)). Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the increasing tendency of precipitation intensity could exacerbate the effect of global warming on some premium wines that have been produced for >400 years.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85066757539&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85066757539&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.05.449
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.05.449
M3 - Article
C2 - 31176971
AN - SCOPUS:85066757539
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 685
SP - 508
EP - 513
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
ER -