Abstract
Southern California has seen a resurgence of winegrowing regions in the
past few decades, however the future of winegrape climatic suitability
in the area has not been exhaustively explored. This study evaluated the
future climate suitability for the cultivation of winegrape and
potential global warming impacts on southern California’s winegrowing
regions through a series of high-resolution surface air temperature and
precipitation projections obtained with the WRF-SSIB regional climate
model. Results reveal that by mid-21st-century the surface air
temperature will increase by approximately 1.2 °C, while average
precipitation will decrease by as much as 11% in the southern
winegrowing areas under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
high greenhouse-gas emissions scenario. Evaluation of bioclimatic
suitability indices indicate increases in heat accumulation for all
major winegrowing areas; including an increase of about 10% in
growing-degree day, while morning low temperatures in September may
experience increases of approximately 11% in the future, thus impacting
negatively the ripening stage of grapevines and leading to changes in
wine composition and quality. Additionally, the extent of areas
classified under the cool to warm climate suitability categories could
decrease by nearly 42% in the study area by 2050. Conditions in
southern California are already warm and dry for viticulture and
continuing heat accumulation increase, along with rainfall reduction,
could potentially place additional stress to winegrape crop in the area,
including advanced phenological timing and moisture deficit stress that
could lead to decreases in yield. The projected decline in viticulture
suitability highlights the need for adaptive capacity within this sector
to mitigate the impacts of global warming. Possible mitigating
strategies include planting hotter climate grape varieties, moving
vineyards to regions that are more suitable in the future, and adopting
dry-farming techniques.