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https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-1451
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-1451
03 Jan 2023
 | 03 Jan 2023

Viticulture extension in response to global climate change drivers – lessons from the past and future projections

Joel Guiot, Nicolas Bernigaud, Alberte Bondeau, Laurent Bouby, and Wolfgang Cramer

Abstract. The potential areal extent of agricultural crops is sensitive to climate change and its underlying drivers. To distinguish between the drivers of past variations in the Mediterranean viticulture extension since Early Antiquity and improve projections for the future, we propose an original attribution method based on an emulation of coupled climate and ecosystem models. The emulator connects the potential productivity of grapevines to global climate drivers, notably orbital parameters, solar and volcanic activities, demography and greenhouse gas concentrations. We found that variations in potential area for viticulture during the last three millennia in the Mediterranean Basin were mainly due to volcanic activity, while the effect of solar activity and orbital changes were negligible. In the future, as expected, the dominating factor is the increase in greenhouse gases, causing significantly drier conditions and thus major difficulties for viticulture in Spain and North Africa. These constraints will concern significant areas of the Southern Mediterranean Basin when global warming exceeds +2 °C above pre-industrial conditions. Our experiments showed that even an intense volcanic activity comparable to that of the Samalas – sometimes considered as the starting point of the Little Ice Age at the mid 13th century - would not slow down this decline in viticulture extension in the southern margin of the Mediterranean area.

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Journal article(s) based on this preprint

20 Jun 2023
Viticulture extension in response to global climate change drivers – lessons from the past and future projections
Joel Guiot, Nicolas Bernigaud, Alberte Bondeau, Laurent Bouby, and Wolfgang Cramer
Clim. Past, 19, 1219–1244, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1219-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1219-2023, 2023
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.

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In the Mediterranean, the vine is an important part of the economy since Roman times....
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