WINETECH Technical Yearbook 2020

more rainfall in October/November, could delay phenology, or promote vegetative growth of the grapevine, increasing vigour. Winter months are key for chill unit calculations and efficient budburst for an even and timeous start to the growing season. April, May and July showed increasing maximum temperatures and decreasing minimum temperatures. Rainfall is decreasing overall in the winter months with the exception of increases in June for the last decade. The shifts of rainfall out of the post-harvest and winter periods, could have an impact on the soil moisture and temperature profile, this would impact the traditional irrigation strategies. The results highlighted that the climate in the Western Cape wine growing area is changing, with a general trend of warming that was more pronounced in some regions and for some months. South Africa’s wine grape growing regions are characterised by diversity in climate, topography, soil type, etcetera. This diversity is a key for effective adaptive strategies, it allows for more complexity in the management of climate change. Changes in the areas of suitability for certain cultivars could be of major importance for the regional economy. Adaptation, change in production practices and development of new wine regions are the keys to surviving climate change. The South African wine industry has already shown considerable flexibility in shifting geographically to new production areas that are characterised by cooler climatic conditions, but this may come at a cost with regard to less favourable conditions, such as more summer rainfall, changes in wind during critical growth and ripening stages. The study emphasised the need for more climate monitoring sites, especially in the complex terrain of the Western Cape. Spatial and temporal data sources need to be integrated to create new spatial and temporal layers of

WESTERN CAPE: LONG TERM WEATHER STATION DATASETS

FIGURE 1. Two spatial networks of long-term climate data for the average period of 1980-2014. (Data source: ISCW-ARC.)

WINETECH TECHNICAL YEARBOOK 2020 20