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The sun shines on vineyards above the village of Viviers sur Artaut in the Champagne region of France. Could global warming impact the types of grapes grown there? Julian Elliott / robertharding/Getty Images
Could global climate change put an end to the centuries-old French wine industry? Affects on the vineyards might not be catastrophic today, but a new study published in Nature Climate Change suggests climate change is definitely making its mark on how French wine is produced.
"The wine industry is so closely connected to what's happening with climate change," says the study's lead author Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "We focused on France because they've been making wine for centuries and have records going back 400 years."