EAS News Articles

Climate changes could harm U.S. wine

The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Climate warming could spell disaster for much of the multibillion-dollar U.S. wine industry.
Areas suitable for growing premium wine grapes could be reduced by 50 percent - and possibly as much as 81 percent - by the end of this century, according to a study Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The main problem: an increase in the frequency of extremely hot days, said Noah Diffenbaugh of the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University.(Full Article)

Global Warming's Wrath on Grapes

ScienceNOW Daily News
By Betsy Mason
10 July 2006
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. (Full Article)

State on red (and white) alert
Study: Global warming may one day lay waste to California's wines

RECORDNET.COM
Reed Fujii, Record Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, Jul 11, 2006
The new study, conducted by many of the same researchers, looked instead at maximum and minimum temperatures as global carbon dioxide levels rise to between 700 and 800 parts per million by the end of the century.
"The real effect is from the increase in extremely hot days," said co-author Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor in earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University. (Full Article)

Global warming seen as threat to vineyards

NAPA AND SONOMA VALLEYS MAY BE UNSUITABLE FOR WINE GRAPES BY END OF CENTURY

The Mercury News
By Robert Lee Hotz
Los Angeles Times
Global warming could wither many premium U.S. vineyards by the end of the century, according to a new computerized climate projection released Monday.
A predicted rise in the number of days in the growing season hotter than 95 degrees, due to rising levels of greenhouse gases, could sharply reduce the areas suitable for vintage wine-grape production, threatening areas such as Northern California's Napa and Sonoma valleys, an international team of scientists concluded in research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Although wine is produced in 48 states, California's $16.5 billion industry, with more than 500,000 acres of vineyards, accounts for almost 90 percent of the nation's wine grapes.
``We found that at elevated greenhouse-gas concentrations, the frequency of extremely hot days increases to the point where it is impossible to grow premium wine grapes in many areas of the country,'' said Noah Diffenbaugh, a member of the research team that studies the impact of climate change at Purdue University. (Full Article)

In Sickness and in Health

College of Science Insights/Spring/Summer 2006
By Teresa Elias
Mother Earth has a fever and we can’t take her to the emergency room. Greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are changing the climate and raising the earth’s mean temperature. Recent studies out of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences suggest that we can expect more changes than just the temperature. Even for hot weather fans, there’s cause for concern because the worse Mother Earth feels, the worse you may feel, too. (Full Article)

Extreme heat reduces and shifts United States premium wine production in the 21st century M.A. White, N.S. Diffenbaugh, G.V. Jones, J.S. Pal, F. Giorgi
PNAS

Purdue Climate Change Research Center
The most detailed climate model to date projects United States wine production could decline by 81 percent by the end of this century due to human-driven climate warming. A research team used a high-resolution climate model, requiring five months of computation time, to project daily temperatures for specific regions of the United States and determine the effects on premium wine production.
"This is another piece of evidence that climate change is likely to affect our daily lives," said co-author Noah Diffenbaugh, "It goes well beyond the global mean temperature."
"Premium wine has economic and aesthetic value in the U.S. and globally. It is an important part of our culture and is very vulnerable to changes in temperature. The impact of the projected climate change is potentially dramatic," said Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and member of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center.
The United States is the fourth largest grape producer in the world, and its wine production has an economic value of $2.9 billion annually according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Premium wine grapes require a well-balanced climate that gets neither too hot nor too cold. There must be a low risk of frost and an absence of extreme heat. The model projects that the frequency of extremely hot days, days 95 F or higher, could increase during the growing season anywhere from 30-50 days. Wine plants would be unable to tolerate this and production would be eliminated in many areas. Grape and wine production would be shifted to much smaller regions in the Northeast and Northwest, and premium wine production would be reduced by half while total wine production would be reduced by 81 percent, Diffenbaugh said.
The results of the research will be published in the July 10 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team, led by Michael White, of Utah State University, highlighted the importance of incorporating fine-scale processes in climate change impact studies. Earlier climate models using average monthly temperatures and focusing on much broader areas would have been unable to see these affects. Changes in the average temperature due to climate warming would only be enough to cause minor reductions in the total area available for winegrape production. "Had we continued to look only at mean, or average, temperature, we would have underestimated the impact on wine production. It doesn't show the extremes, which are what had the greatest impact in this study."
Diffenbaugh explained the significance of looking at a smaller time scale. "It is similar to the stock market. When one looks at the average for the year, it could show that stocks are down 7 percent. That alone won't cause anyone to lose his or her shirt. But we know that the stock market dips and peaks during the year; it fluctuates. On a given day stocks could have gone down in value by much more, and certain stocks and investors could have lost everything. The outcome for those investors is far worse than the yearly average would suggest."
The climate model relied on the powerful computer system at Purdue University's Rosen Center for Advanced Computing to perform the five months of computation required for such high resolution. "When we run a climate model experiment such as this, we do our best to include all the details and factors that affect our environment and the climate, including changes in greenhouse gases over time. It is a very complicated system. Sophisticated climate models include hundreds of thousands, even millions, of line of computer code and require massive computing power to run detailed experiments such as this," Diffenbaugh said.
This research is applicable to other crops and even human health, he said. "Investigations into the potential effects on soybean production, corn pests, timber production and infectious diseases and heat-related illness are already under way." Diffenbaugh said the future is not set and many factors will influence the real outcome.
"Our research is a detailed projection of where we might be headed over the next century. How things turn out will be a function of a lot of choices made over the coming decades. As people respond, the trajectory changes. This is a snapshot of where things are headed now, but decisions we make as a group and as individuals can alter the course. By pushing the envelope scientifically, we have much more information available to us; what is done with that information is what will determine the outcome."
The Rosen Center for Advanced Computing is a research computing center at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. It is named in memory of Saul Rosen, who served as director of Purdue's Computing Center from 1968-87 and who helped to establish Purdue as a pioneering academic institution in high-performance computing. The Rosen Center is a part of Information Technology at Purdue, which is responsible for planning and coordinating the central computing and telecommunications systems on the West Lafayette campus. The Rosen Center provides advanced computing resources and services to support the computationally intensive research of Purdue faculty and staff. It also conducts its own research and development to enhance the capabilities of these resources.
The Purdue Climate Change Research Center promotes and organizes research and education on global climate change and studies its impact on agriculture, natural ecosystems and society. It was established in 2004 to support Purdue as a world-class leader in research and education on regional scale climate change, its impacts and mitigation and adaptation strategies. The center serves as a hub for a range of activities beyond scientific research, including teaching, public education and the development of public-policy recommendations.

College of Science Newsletter (August, 2006)

Earth and atmospheric sciences professor Noah Diffenbaugh caught the attention of the Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, and NPR, among others, with his paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences asserting that global warming could hurt the U.S. wine growing industry (see full story below). Hint: Stock up now! <Full Article>