The influence of recent climate change on wine regions in Quebec, Canada

Probabilistic climate change scenarios for viticultural potential in Québec

“…Finally, even though sunshine hours are currently higher than in other traditional viticultural regions such as Bordeaux and New Zealand (Jones 2012), it is unclear how cloud cover will affect future sunshine hours in southern Québec. Cloud physics in climate models being mostly associated with sub-grid parameterizations, a rigorous assessment of future cloud cover is beyond the scope of this article and remains a challenging topic in climate research (Bony et al 2015).…”

“…Measured bright-sunshine hours are higher in southern Québec than Bordeaux, Languedoc and New Zealand (Jones 2012). A wine industry developed about four decades ago in Québec, with the first commercial winery (La Vitacée) established in 1977 in Sainte-Barbe (Dubois 2001) and an estimated increase in total stock from 82,925 vine stocks in 1985 to 512,000 in 2000 (Dubois 2001 representing a fivefold growth in only 15 years.…”

“…Furthermore, climate change has already had measurable impacts on the wine industry worldwide (Battaglini et al 2009;Jones 2012). During the next decades, evolving climatic conditions could result in the collapse of currently vulnerable wineproducing regions, as well as the rise of new ones (White et al 2006;Hannah et al 2013).…”

“…Non-climatic factors include soil type and quality (drainage, depth, texture, and acidity), slope magnitude and direction as well as altitude, to name a few. However, the main challenge for winemakers in high-latitude regions remains climate constraints (Jones 2012). More specifically: length of the frost-free season (and the implicit risk of freezing around the bud-break period), the accumulation of heat during the ripening period and finally harsh winter minimum temperatures (Shaw 1999).…”

Understanding convergence and divergence in the framing of climate change responses: An analysis of two wine companies

“…Wine businesses in Australia thus have strong reasons for engaging in both anticipatory and reactive climate change responses. Evidence suggests that, as in other wine-growing regions of the world (Battaglini et al, 2009;Belliveau et al, 2006;Jones, 2012;Nicholas and Durham, 2012;Pickering, 2013), many are already busy adapting to climate change in a variety of ways (Galbreath, 2011;Park et al, 2012). A prime motivation for this adaptation action is the special sensitivity of wine grapes to weather-related impacts of climatic change, stemming from numerous physiological and production factors.…”