Climate change and winegrape quality in Australia

Abstract

Various agricultural sectors are likely to be sensitive to projected climate change. Winegrapes are particularly sensitive to climate change because of the intrinsic link between the climate and the characteristic and often unique quality of the resulting wine. Here we present results from a study exploring the impact of projected climate change on the Australian wine industry. In the present study, impact models based upon existing viticultural and winegrape market data are used to estimate how projected regional temperature increases might affect the winegrape and wine industry throughout Australia by 2030 and 2050. The effect on winegrape quality is determined for different premium winegrape varieties separately. Differential impacts were determined across a range of base-climates, climate change regimes and varietal crush profiles. This represents the first national study of the impact of climate change on winegrape quality that is regionally specific, and that integrates varietal differences in temperature sensitivity. The impact of warming was found to be negative overall, assuming no adaptation is implemented, for all Australian winegrowing regions. It is found that the reduction to winegrape quality varied regionally, with greater quality reductions calculated for the inland regions. Without adaptation, winegrape quality may be reduced at a national scale in Australia from 7% with lower warming to 39% with higher future warming by the year 2030, and from 9% with lower warming to 76% with higher warming by the year 2050 (all uncertainties considered). KEY WORDS: Climate change · Winegrape quality · Winegrape varieties Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherClim Res 36: [99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111] 2008 (Bindi et al. 1996), or shifting regional suitability for viticulture (Kenny & Harrison 1992, Hayhoe et al. 2004, none have directly and quantitatively assessed the impact on winegrape quality, nor attempted to determine the impact at a national industry scale.Earlier studies have discussed the impact of climate change on the wine industry without any detailed spatial modelling of projected impacts, or projection uncertainties (Dry 1988, Smart 1989, Schultz 2000, Pincus 2003. Both global and regional climate change projection uncertainties are examined in this assessment. A range of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenarios and also a selection of global climate models (GCMs) is utilised to incorporate uncertainties in climate projections. We have undertaken a spatial assessment and included 9 future climate possibilities and 2 outlook periods. Because projected climate change is not anticipated to be uniform across Australia, with more warming inland than near the coast (Whetton & Hennessy 2001), we applied spatially varying climate projections to a fine-resolution grid of baseline temperature. This allows unique regional impacts to be calculated. The method also enables an analysis of the sensitivity of the industry to ...

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