Just brutal, but thanks to all for passing the news along. Terrible.
-8C is 18F
That’s crushing
Terrible news. Seems ironic that with a changing climate (fewer overall frost days, longer growing season) frost damage increases (early bud break increases the risk). Lots of research on this such as Will tree species experience increased frost damage due to climate change because of changes in leaf phenology?
Unreal and tragic - hear’s hoping against hope that things are not as bad as the reports we’re hearing.
Cheers
The most recent updates have mentioned 80 to 100%, depending on the sub-region.
The problem is not -8°C at the start of April - per-se - the Burgundians have their ice-saint day and it’s the 13th May after which they expect no more frosts.
The problem is temperatures in the 20s in February - it’s this that brings about the early growth and bud-burst. For generations, there have been no open buds at the start of April…
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Ouch.
A local friend reported 80% loss in Châteauneuf du Pape. Possibly a bit pessimistic, idk, more news next week.
Alain
I’m new to frost damage in wine, but given where we rae in the season, is this unrecoverable?
If budburst has taken place (as a result of warming temperatures early in the growing season) and those nascent buds are destroyed by frost, then they are toast for the year.
So much this…
Climate change seems to be exerting its effect of raising the thermal max and average at the top end, but without a concomitant lift on the bottom end of the temperature scale, or at least only decreasing the frequency of certain lows but without eradicating or raising the lower limit.
For perennial plants I see this as a problem in adaptation as any shift to more tropical/heat-adapted species will only put them at risk of being wiped out (eventually) by the standard lows for our temperate climate.
And as Bill pointed out, here we have had a ridiculously hot month of Feb/Mar accelerating bud break which has exposed the vines to not so freakish low temperatures.
Evidently Rioja has suffered, too:
and young shoots too
Northern Italy has been hit hard too. Here’s this from today’s Financial Times:
“Temperatures also dropped to below zero across the north of Italy, after weeks of sunshine and warm weather. Nebbiolo, Moscato and Barbera winemakers in Piedmont said that between 50-80 per cent of their annual production had been destroyed by the frost.”
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AND I actually think that this post is BRILLIANT!
Seems like Jura is hit as well.
That is well-reasoned.
One thing that no one wants to contemplate, however, is that the Beaufort Gyre in the Arctic is now impounding an enormous amount of very cold fresh water, more than the long-term average. At some point this will release into the North Atlantic, which will disrupt the usual warm ocean currents, and the climate of Europe will cool dramatically, to the point that “normal” agriculture will be impossible. For a while (meaning, decades to centuries, as this situation takes a long time to return to the one we are accustomed to) there will be summer freezes, and widespread famine, as the European climate reverts to that which is more normal for its latitude (as measured over the last 1.8 million years, the Pleistocene). Vineyard productivity will be the least of European worries then.
It could happen any day now. Not necessarily tomorrow, but there is a good chance that we could see this in our lifetimes.
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It’s an important point of view but … unfortunately it’s hard to imagine finding vines (or other plants) that can overcome very early season heat events (considered “extreme”, but becoming more commonplace) that trigger plant growth followed by prolonged and/or severe cold events. The point that climate scientists are making is that extreme events while difficult to model are becoming more common for a multitude of reasons.