Grape Harvest Temperature Reconstructions - More Stuff

Western European climate, and Pinot noir grape harvest dates in Burgundy, France, since the 17th century

http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr_oa/c046p243.pdf

from the document:

And something I did a few years ago.
Note the vertical scales are offset but per division scales are correct

And a comparison to CET

There seems to be no further analysis (more recent than 2003) which was done by:

 Chuine I, Yiou P, Viovy N, Seguin B, Daux V, Leroy Ladurie E (2004) Grape ripening as a past climate indicator.

From the above it seems that grapes despite possible  cultivar changes give a good proxy for temperature.

http://www.cefe.cnrs.fr/images/stories/DPTEFonctionnelle/BIOFLUX/Chercheurs/isabelle_chuine/publications/ChuineNature2004.pdf

http://www-ecole.enitab.fr/people/kees.vanleeuwen/articles/PI_36.pdf

CET vs Grape harvest

The first plot shows yearly comparison with temperature not inverted and not filtered.
The second plot show the full grape harvest period with axes scaled and temperatures inverted.

Click for full size plots

Obviously the Pinot Noir grape varieties have changed over the years and CET is not the temperature of the area where the grapes are farmed. Still gives a reasonable match!

Grape harvest

Nothing seems to give a useful proxy to temperature. Some of the better ones are grape harvest and budbust dates. But these only go back to about 1300s.



Note that grape harvest has not been converted to temp. so high temp = early harvest!