Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A third of this year’s French wine crop has reportedly been lost to a late season frost. Wine growers resorted to burning fossil fuel to save their plants.
Third of French wine lost after rare cold snaps devastate vines
Unseasonal frost is ‘agricultural disaster of 21st century’ as ice after warm weather decimates grape harvests
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
@achrisafis
Fri 16 Apr 2021 02.53 AESTAt least a third of French wine production worth almost €2bn (£1.7bn) in sales will be lost this year after rare freezing temperatures devastated many vines and fruit crops across France, raising concerns over the climate crisis.
“This is probably the greatest agricultural catastrophe of the beginning of the 21st century,” the French agriculture minister, Julien Denormandie, said this week as the government declared an “agricultural disaster” and began preparing emergency financial measures.
The unseasonal wave of bitter frost and ice hit suddenly after a bout of warm weather, which worsened the damage. The warmth had encouraged vines and fruit trees to develop earlier than usual, only to be withered by the sudden cold.
The national federation of agricultural holders’ unions told AFP it believes at least a third of French wine production would be lost as certain grape harvests in many of France’s best-known wine-producing regions risked being decimated.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/apr/15/agricultural-disaster-two-billion-worth-of-french-wine-production-lost-after-cold-snaps
President Macron tweeted a picture of farmers burning thousands of gallons of kerosene, to try to prevent global warming from killing more of their grapes. No news yet on whether President Macron will offer relief from French global warming taxes, on fossil fuel burned to hold back the intense cold.
Perhaps the coming shortage of 2021 season French wine is what the WMO was thinking about, when they said the impacts of the climate crisis are already too costly for the world to afford. Let us hope the world wakes up and addresses global warming, before we all freeze to death.
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No doubt The Australian Bureau of Meteorology will remove 2020 and 2021 from their historic weather records data which begins from 1910 to assist their warming trend.
Anthropogenic missing links with “benefits”.
They should have simply used those efficient Electric Heaters powered by Solar Panels erected above the vines…Oh Wait…
LOL 🙂
Bingo, we have a winner.
Doh! The French growers should have just left their Teslas idling in the vineyards with the heater on full!
Actually, what they SHOULD do is power up their wind turbines in reverse, and blow the still frosty air away.
Or extract the remaining heat content of the cold air, using a refrigeration compressor, and pump it directly to the vines through subterranean tubes. That would kill two birds with one stone, provide heat for the vines and cool the planet with the super cooled air produced!
Bryan A
Oh wait? Wait for what?
This is all typical exaggeration.
Do you want to look at REALLY cold April TMIN temperatures?
Here they are:
FRE00106192 2012 2 4 -20.2 (°C)
FRM00007299 2012 2 4 -20.2
FR000007560 2012 2 4 -18.4
FR009021000 1963 2 4 -18.3
FRE00106207 1963 2 4 -17.6
FR000007190 1963 2 4 -17.4
FRE00106192 1971 1 4 -17.2
FRE00104949 1963 2 4 -17.0
FR000007560 1956 2 4 -16.9
FR000007190 1965 3 4 -16.7
FRE00106203 1963 2 4 -16.7
FR000007560 1963 2 4 -16.6
FRE00106196 2012 2 4 -16.6
FRM00007471 2012 2 4 -16.6
FR000007190 1929 2 4 -16.2
FRE00104112 1956 2 4 -16.0
FRE00104112 2012 2 4 -16.0
FRM00007591 2012 2 4 -16.0
FR000007354 1971 1 4 -15.9
FRE00106192 1963 2 4 -15.9
Did anybody complain here in 2012?
And… in this long list of increasing minima temperatures you see the top 20 of above, you have to go deep in order to find back these allegedly so horribly cold temperatures during this April.
Out the top 100, nothing.
Out of the top 1000, you see this:
FR000007560 2021 4 7 -9.6
FRE00106196 2021 4 8 -9.4
FRM00007471 2021 4 8 -9.4
FR000007560 2021 4 13 -6.1
FRE00106200 2021 1 4 -6.1
FRM00007558 2021 1 4 -6.1
And of these few, you should in fact exclude
FR000007560 44.1167 3.5831 1567.0 MONT-AIGOUAL
because of the altitude of the station.
Thus: yes, France had some colder nights during April, like had Germany.
But according to the wine makers I know since longer time in France and I recently asked, their greatest problem was NOT the April frost: it was a far too warm March.
J.-P. D.
Actu7ally, yes, we all pointed this out in 2012. And they are really complaining about a warm spring? Sure, buddy, sure.
2h9
YES they were complaining about last March.
People like you doubt about everything that doesn’t match their narrative.
Where do you live? En France, peut-être? Hmmmh.
J.-P. D.
I live farther north than France, and I doubt farmers are complaining about warmer weather, that just fits your anti-human narrative. Perhaps you can enlighten us all as to how YOU are going to fix the climate us evil humans have destroyed? we are waiting with bated breath, tell us how you are going to do it, sweety.
2h9
I see below you are ” [s]itting here in western PA “, and above I see that you are a king in useless polemic.
Bye bye, sweety!
Ahh, now you gonna cry? Squeeze out some tears for us.
Honestly it’s a pity that i can’t add a photo, but our 3 vines still needs to “wake up” from their winter sleep. So i wonder wjat vines they have as the end of March was “record warm” here as well. The grapvines didn’t bother doing anything. Smart vines i suppose?
Frederik Michiels
Where are you in France?
And… if [y]our 3 vines still needs to “wake up” from their winter sleep, may I suppose you certainly won’t have to complain about destructive freezing?
Le contraire m’étonnerait, Monsieur Michiels.
J.-P. D.
I really don’t know what to say when I run across the occasional person that doesn’t even understand that farmers ALWAYS complain! It could be the greatest growing season of their lifetime and they will still find something wrong. It is the nature of the beast. Nothing new under the sun.
rah
” I run across the occasional person… ”
Should you mean me, so I suggest that you read comments before replying.
I had during my life much more with persons complaining all the time than you could ever imagine – winemakers included.
My comment was about a one more time totally exaggerated report on alleged cooling, and not about ‘farmers’.
J.-P. D.
Been around farmers all my life, complaining is one of their most favored pastimes.
Yep. If it’s “the greatest growing season of their lifetime” – they’ll complain about the low prices for their harvest.
The garbage Bin has shown us that temps are similar to 1963, 1956, 1965 etc…
Well done Bin. ! 🙂
Ooooh… the little stubborn and aggressive ankle biter is here again.
I wonder why so many people have the mistaken impression that the French are arrogant bastards?
For much of April 2021 the majority of the polar stratosphere
(30 hPa and below) is at its coldest ever recorded.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/19/so-far-germany-seeing-coldest-april-in-104-years-second-coldest-since-1881-snowiest-since-1986/#comment-3228584
30mb9065.png (864×576) (noaa.gov)
Hatter Eggburn
Yes! I have seen Vuk’s comment.
But… I’m wondering about all people giving on this blog hints to stratospheric cooling.
Until now I thought only the Warmistas would use it as an argument for global warming (in concordance with the warming of the lower troposphere):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_ecu50TZYPYfr57XIWZ_rcu9p2trm2hy/view
Moreover, the temperature on Vuk’s graph looks this year here and there higher than it did last year at the same place. What, do you think, does that mean?
And now the best for you: I just downloaded UAH 6.0 LS data (lower stratosphere) for the North Pole:
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tls/uahncdc_ls_6.0.txt
(see the NoPol column) and plotted it:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MsMZNBXknRSgW_LaDV5dMl2ZOB6EqYNa/view
It’s not quite the 30 hPa level (UAH’s LS is at about -60 °C, thus round 12 km high, i.e. at probably 200 hPa; but that is not what matters here).
What matters, Hatter Eggburn, is: what can you tell us about this graph? Do you know anything about stratospheric temperatures, and what they exactly mean for us?
Than tell us all you know! I’ll enjoy your reply!
J.-P. D.
Yes I know that according to the CO2 hynm-sheet, CO2 back-radiation warming is supposed to cool the stratosphere. This month stratospheric record cold has translated to actual anomalously cold weather in Europe with big losses for French vineyards and other fruit growers. Note these things happen in the real world, not in computer models.
You can continue your “if it’s cold it proves it’s warming” number if you think that’s going to work for you.
I LOVE this wonderful downvoting!
J.-P. D.
So, you keep down voting your own comments to give you some false appearance of martyrdom. You are a special kind of stupid.
Are these the raw temperatures? Or the adjusted temperatures?
CO2 is green life, and, in return, we get luscious grapes to imbibe, and opulent oxygen to breathe.
DaVinci said wine is liquid sunshine.
2019 might have been the ‘last best chance’ the alarmunists had.
Actually, 2017 was the ‘last best chance’ the alarmunists had.
2018 hinted at cooling, and 2019 was the full-meal deal – a huge crop failure across the Great Plains of North America. Funny, we don’t read much about that, do we?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/15/on-99-year-anniversary-of-huge-disruptive-solar-storm-we-are-about-to-enter-the-deepest-period-of-solar-recession-ever-recorded/#comment-2995529
Updating my post of 10May2020:
Planting was ~one month across the Great Plains of North America for the past two years 2018 and 2019. In 2018 the growing season was warm and the crop recovered, but in 2019 there was a huge crop failure across the Great Plains; however the harvest was good in the USA East and South.
In 2019 fully 30% of the huge USA corn crop was never planted because of wet ground. Much of the grain crop across the Great Plains was not harvested because of early cold and snow in the Fall. Read the paper by Joe D’Aleo and me.
THE REAL CLIMATE CRISIS IS NOT GLOBAL WARMING, IT IS COOLING, AND IT MAY
HAVE ALREADY STARTED
By Allan M.R. MacRae and Joseph D’Aleo, October 27, 2019.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/27/the-real-climate-crisis-is-not-global-warming-it-is-cooling-and-it-may-have-already-started/
why are you yelling at us?
He’s not yelling he’s Talking Bigger
EMPHASIS ! 😉
Actually Joel, I’m shouting BULLSH!T! at the top of my lungs, but not at anyone here – I’m speaking directly to the warmunists. 🙂
Allan,
This is why they are so desperate to get the Green Raw Deal pushed through! They are frantic that even the true believers of GangGreen will start losing their fervor!
And who is more dangerous than a former cult member who has awoken to the con!?
Old Chinese saying: “there is only one reality and that is hunger”
Catastrophic anthropogenic [sociopolitical] climate change by consensus or force, and redistributive change as secular incentives to grease the path.
[sociopathic]
Fundamentally, the Great CAGW Scare has never been about Climate, which was merely a pretext for Marxist subversion and infiltration. The damage to the West has been achieved.
Graemethecat, your observation was confirmed by CNN manager during the Project Veritas clandestine recording where he said (paraphrasing) that the Corona Virus was a temporary diversion and they would return to covering CAGW more after it is under control.
And a World government based on the UN. With no voting allowed of course.
There is considerable irony in a government fighting warming by imposing taxes on the stuff people use to fight the cold.
There is nothing too unusual about an April snowstorm here around Boulder, Colorado, but 10 degrees F this morning appears to have beaten the previous low temperature record by 5 F.
The forecast calls for snow again tomorrow.
Bet you are thanking your lucky stars you aren’t in the climate crisis danger zone near the equator.
A climate of crises. The magic eight ball indicates may you live in interesting times, social progress ahead.
I’m in a climate crisis here in Tucson. I haven’t closed the glass patio door in over a 6 weeks, just the screen door in front to of it. I may may walk into the glass one day when I have to start closing it again.
Funny.
I am suffering greatly from extreme climate change; the shorts I’ve been wearing for the last couple of weeks had to be put on hold and the sweats redeployed!
Thank goodness I didn’t turn off the furnace for the summer; I might have had to wear a silly winter hat around the house again!
26 degrees C at 4am, here in freezing Villavicencio, Colombia…
Wow, CNN and the BBC must be all over that ……..
…just as soon as they find a connection to Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia!
What are you all complaining about? It’s still cold, and I’m still running my furnace. If the forecast for tomorrow and the rest of the week is even vaguely accurate (and the local meteorologist is very good at HIS job, has been for decades), then we’ll see warmer daytime temps but still have cold nights. And I’ll have the furnace running on “Heat” instead of A/C until Mama Nature decides which way the wind blows this Spring.
My biggest complaint is that it slows the start of wildflowers blossoming. The trilliums should be fairly big and opening by now and they are not. My camera datestamps everything I shoot, which makes it easier to track and compare to prior years. The geese and ducks are not happy, either.
I am getting overnight frosts but with clear skies during the day it is quite warm. In fact since the conservatory gets sun virtually all day it can provide a bit of heat to the rest of the house. The sun on the house means it absorbs the heat and doesn’t need anything much in the evening but it is on for the whole morning spell each day.
And my magnolias have been badly hit. The warm March teased them out to flower but the frosts have burnt them. Other plants are starting to suffer from the constant cold nights. Very dry with no westerly weather systems coming through, and to think we were wondering if it would ever dry out last month.
It. Has. Snowed. (Just now.)
I remember Snow Thunderstorms in Fort Collins in May, but 10 F is pretty cold even in progressive/regressive Boulder.
The silver lining is that when the extent of the grape crop is reduced dramatically before the new grapes are formed, more energy goes into those few grapes that do make it, giving them more flavor intensity and often making the best wine for decades. Of course, less wine means prices go up to reflect the scarcity, but 2021 could be a “vintage of the century.”
Maybe China import bans on Australian wine will prove to have been beneficial for Australian wine exports?
My thought too. French wines have a caché, and I do mean this in the pomposity sense even if I can’t spell cachet, that I have yet to be able to understand. I do try, but either I can’t afford whatever decent wines France ships to Australia or Australian wines are simply superior to such a degree that box is better than French. Anything that makes Australian wines more available to the World would be a good thing, except I expect my prices would rise.
Exactly – see Robert Parker, Wine Advocate. As far as I know the 1989,1990 crop had frost damage in May. Best Bordeaux wines I ever found!
Still an ocean of cheaper wine is needed, it must not all be glorious!
The farmers were already in Paris campaigning against policy before this hit. The Paris Accord is more deadly to them than some frost.
Mein Gott.
Look at ventusky. What happened was there was a blocking high to the west and a strong low pressure developed over southern Norway. The clockwise high and the counterclockwise low working together sucked cold air from the arctic right over England and France.
Mutter Natur
Naturally
While unfortunate for French makers, this is great new for the Australian wine industry.
2020 was a tough vintage in the Hunter region (Best solid red wines evah 😉 because of smoke and very dry conditions. With CV-19, probably not a lot of pickers available either.
There will be interesting wines from the 2020 vintage because of this.
2021 looks to have been a really good vintage all round though, with local pickers reaping good payments for their work….
https://www.winehousehuntervalley.com.au/blog/Vintage-2021
https://www.maitlandmercury.com.au/story/7108119/hunters-2021-vintage-stays-close-to-home-with-grape-pickers/
And we aren’t going to get any of that up here in the USA Midwest? I’m sad!!! Sad, I tell you!!! Not fair!!!
and New Zealand perfect storm.
The French need to learn to make ice wine like the Canadians
With the current set up of the jet stream l can see the these cold snaps extending deep into the spring and maybe even into June. Also am expecting plenty of cold winter weather turning up in the SH over the coming months. Its shaping up that 2021 will be “The year the LIA returned.
No, in January, 2022, just like clockwork, 2021 will be declared to be one of the hottest years ever. Data be damned (or fiddled).
Wait, doesn’t the burning of thousands of gallons of kerosene across thousands of acres of vineyards violate the paris climate accords?
These French people are burning what used to be called “smudgepots”, which were outlawed in California orange groves over 50 years ago due to horrible air pollution. Not very progressive, in fact its regressive.
What do you mean?
Californian growers soak their frost endangered crops with water.
It won’t be long before California bans lots of water usage on tender crops.
California politicians intend to progress California back to 1740s.
Next time, burn the Teslas!
No, that would poison the wine.
Eric,
Would burning teenage climate activists save the crop or just leave it undrinkable!?
Very SOUR, BITTER and lacking in taste. !
How Dare You !… /s
Inappropriate remark, AM, no place for that here.
Come on, we all know that was a joke
Perhaps not a very funny one?
What happens when a culture devolves back into a superstitious ignorant phase? Women – old and young – that are annoying to everyone else in the village get the shaft. Or, rather, tied to it and barbecued.
That’s where the Left is heading us, with their unthinking beliefs in all sorts of contrary to reality religions.
No, you don’t do that. You hire them to work in the fields among the leafy green vines (mostly pulling weeds out) and give them a shed to sleep in, some kind of comestibles and water, and a few francs or dollars or Euros and tell them they’re contributing to ‘how Green Is My Planet’.
They will dive on it.
They are called “backpackers” down here.
But the government pays for them
It just goes to show you how insignificant the global average temperature really is. It can’t tell you if it’s going to be unusually cold or hot in any given region during any given year. It can’t tell you if your region will have more or less storms, of greater or lesser severity. It’s a lot like Nostradamus’ predictions. You can’t know what he was predicting until after the event happens.
Unless you are talking a hundred years ahead.
Very droll 😆.
China will save the world, hundreds of new coal fired power stations being commissioned or constructed in China and as foreign aid elsewhere.
Net zero emissions by 2050? By then the 2020/21 new Chinese coal fired power stations will have an accountable working life time to 2070/71 and if well maintained operating to and beyond 80 years should not be a problem.
Two days ago we had a dusting of snow here in the high desert; today I had to rush around making nectar for the first hummingbird of the season! My summer labors have begun!
Maybe if I build a big enough greenhouse they’ll stay here all winter. Nah, who would give up a winter vacation in sunny Mexico to live in a big, glass house!?
The typhoon is moving west over the island of Luzon. The forecasts were that it would miss the Philippines. However, they did not take into account the increase in solar wind and the stronger pressure of the jet stream over Japan. That’s the end of forecasts that don’t take into account changes in solar activity.
Snowstorms in the northeastern US today.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=namer×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
This is the current pattern of the polar vortex in the tropopause.
It was 26 F here in Northern Indiana this morning and the forecast is for it to freeze again tonight. All my fruit trees were in full bloom but now they’re covered in snow. I wonder how bad Michigan’s apple and cherry crops have been damaged.
Dropped to 28F around 4AM this morning, here in NE IL near the state line. The apple tree next door has not yet blossomed and I don’t expect it to, because the cold does throw off that kind of signal (warm, open flowers), and the violet population in my yard is thin to scarce.
In addition, the tress should be nearly leafed out by now and they are barely opened. None of the ‘normal’ activity, like the specific tree blossoms surrounded by leaf buds, is going on.
Throw another virgin down the Global Warming bottomless pit, the climate gods are angry and only sending us cold weather.
I would offer a more technical solution, but have decided to go with the current much favoured logic on display from the CAGW cult members.
It has been an unusually long cold tail to winter here in the UK also.
We have had frosts every night this April until the past two days, here in the Midlands UK.
The blocking high trapping the cold slug of arctic air over us, has meant the wind turbine power supply Boris spends so much time championing has dwindled to almost nothing. Solar yes solar as hopeless as that is here in the UK, has been more productive than wind.
Can I say a big thank you, to our North American forest croppers. Without your tireless dedication felling those CO2 absorbing and storing trees, needed to feed Drax power, we would have had black outs here in the UK in the past month!!!
Rod,
I believe they’re having a tough time finding enough suitable virgins to placate the climate gods, so they are using climate deniers instead!
The Global Warming bottomless pit; is that like the memory hole? Just asking for a friend!
Snowing in Kentucky right now apparently.
St. Louis low this morning 29F broke record low of 32F
(however it was a rather high record low so “low hanging fruit”, e.g. the record low for Apr 24 was 25F)
The forecast of night frosts in April is merciless for French and German farmers.
The French are great at producing only three things; Wine, Cheese. and bread. When the wine is taken out it it is replace by Whine!
“farmers burning thousands of gallons of kerosene” :
If they listened to the (NASA) science, French winegrowers would know that this practice is useless :
Indeed, according to the NASA, those cold snaps are impossible thanks to the CO2, a “tiny heater” in the air which protects our grapes from the cold by emitting at 15 microns (which according to Wien’s displacement law, correspond to the peak wavelength of the spectral radiance of a black body at -80°C … so be careful, if they are in a bad mood, they can burn you !) :
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page2.php
/s
ENSO prediction centre is now saying that La Niña will re emerge in fall 2021 thu’ to winter 2022. Break out the wool lies.
If the increase in solar wind speed continues, La Niña will soon return.
And? This isn’t the start of a new ice age or even a halt to warming…
It is just weather – I’m following the line of numerous posters here who tell me yet another drought, typhoon, flood, heatwave is just ‘weather’.
Griff, you missed an opportunity to explain how the farmers could have used renewable energy to save their fields, instead of resorting to kerosene smudge pots.
What did they use before kerosene became available? Had to be something similar.
Sure it’s weather, Griff. Precisely the type of weather that wouldn’t be occurring in a dangerously warming world.
David Kamakaris
” … the type of weather that wouldn’t be occurring in a
dangerouslywarming world. ”Not sure.
In Western Europe, we experience since at least 30 years a huge increase of low pressure areas travelling over the Northwestern Atlantic from between Greenland and Iceland down to Germany and farther East.
In Berlin, you now feel sometimes as if you were in France or Belgium near the Channel coast.
No idea what this change is due to.
Some say it’s a consequence of an increase of sea and sheet ice melting.
We will see… nous verrons.
J.-P. D.
“No idea what this change is due to.”
The same forcings that have been causing innumerable climate changes during the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. Nothing unprecedented is occurring with our current climate.
In NZ wine growers use helicopters to stir up the frigid air.
Well, that’s all it is, griffie-pooh. It’s just weather, and in case you forgot: weather is short-term. Climate is long-term. There’s no instant ice age stuff unless Toba erupts again.
Now, if it doesn’t go away all summer (in the north) and we can’t swim in Lake Michigan because it’s too cold, that means the steelhead trout might be hungry enough to dive on fishing lures out in the middle of Lake Michigan. Very tasty, they are, too. But I digress. If it stays cold all summer into fall and the corn down in the central plains never has a chance to ripen into hard kernels until very late, that IS a problem. And yes, farmers i the Midwest have been out harvesting corn in the middle of November because that’s how bad the weather got. And that was in the 1960s.
Would you like some popcorn?
FWIW, Griff, I agree with you – it is just weather.
Remember that the next time you point to a weather event and claim it’s Thermageddon
I’ll bet the French are counting their lucky stars they have nuclear to keep them warm at night. It’s just a shame they are shutting them down.
Yes it is weather the exact kind of weather that prompted the scammers to change the nomenclature of their scam from Global warming to Climate Change!
“Following a seasonable and dry start to the week, portions of the central and eastern United States are bracing for a wintry spell that may leave some residents wondering if the calendar flipped back to wintertime.”
Well the weather in April is unseasonably cold, but February and March was unseasonably warm. The problem has been a pattern of variation with freeze thaw, not necessarily a smooth transisition from winter to spring. This is not that unusual. Though I am a confirmed sceptic, I would not necessarily ascribe this event to any sort of either warming or cooling trend. It might be an early sign of a medium term cooling but personally think the evidence does not yet support such a conclusion.
marcjf
A sound comment.
And when you look at the French TMIN data I posted above, I guess you will feel confirmed.
J.-P. D.