Extreme weather threatening vineyards of North-East Italy: multi-temporal satellite analysis in Google Earth Engine

The northern-east part of Italy is an important wine production area, which exports high-quality wine worldwide. The territory boasts of areas that are under the protection of FAO and UNESCO, thanks to the unique relationship between landscape and agriculture. In the last two decades, extreme weather events created criticalities, especially in steep slope territories.

Future climate trends could influence the frequency of heatwaves, drought and intense rainfalls, impacting on vineyards. Therefore, identifying trends helps to understand the risks to which vineyards are subjected.

The purpose of this study is to identify extreme weather trends in the area located in Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia and discover areas that are more affected by increasing and decreasing trends. The workflow started with analyzing historical climate data in different datasets in Google Earth Engine. We implemented the Land Surface Temperature dataset of the Modis satellite for surface temperatures and the CHIRPS Daily dataset for historical precipitation data. Additionally, for 2-meter temperatures and cumulative rainfall, we considered weather station data.

Based on the initial findings, the summer of 2022 reported strong heatwaves and drought. Certain areas showed an increase in surface temperature of more than +20%, compared to the mean summer temperature during the 2000-2010 period. For precipitations, otherwise, the central-east part of the region reported a negative anomaly of around -50 % compared to the summer average of the last 30 years.

Future research activities will focus on intense rainfall and more about the frequency, duration and distribution of heatwaves and drought to detect future scenarios.

The results of this research may inspire the development of sustainable initiatives focused on improving water management, aiming to reduce run-off during intense precipitations and enhancing water storage during drought seasons, as well as on supporting the insurance companies to provide tailored risk coverages against increasing climatic risks in vineyard farms.