The future of wine grape growing regions in europe

Recent warming trends in climatic patterns are now evident from observational studies. Nowadays, investigating the possible impacts of climate change on biological systems has a great importance in several fields of science. 

We applied the MaxEnt modelling approach to predict the possible effect of climate change on wine grape distribution as a species at European scale using basic bioclim variables. Two climate models were developed for 2050 and 2080 by Hadley Centre Coupled Model and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. The area loss is calculated for the main wine producing countries in Europe (Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy). 

Based on the analysis of variable contribution we can conclude that annual mean temperature has great importance in model performance while precipitation variables show much less contribution. The prediction of the best model for the present fits well to the known wine growing regions. Future predictions show consistent changes based on various climate scenarios: wine growing regions are predicted to shift northwards. At the same time, additional problems might arise in the Mediterranean region, especially in the Iberian Peninsula where the most radical changes are predicted (30 % losses in average). France and Italy are less affected. For 2080 the suitable areas continuously decrease except for France where only a small amount of area loss is predicted. The predicted stability until 2050 is dynamic implying adaptation such as change of grape varieties, selection or modification of cultivation technology could be necessary even in those regions which remains suitable in the future.