PCLM-D-24-00266

Uneven impacts of climate change around the world and across the annual cycle of winegrapes

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Wolkovich,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

After  thorough review, the reviewers raised some concerns and the. manuscript requires additional clarification. Additionally, the reviewers comments should be addressed.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 16 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Noureddine Benkeblia, Dr. Sci., Dr. Agr.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. We ask that a manuscript source file is provided at Revision. Please upload your manuscript file as a .doc, .docx, .rtf or .tex.

2. Figure 2: please (a) provide a direct link to the base layer of the map (i.e., the country or region border shape) and ensure this is also included in the figure legend; and (b) provide a link to the terms of use / license information for the base layer image or shapefile. We cannot publish proprietary or copyrighted maps (e.g. Google Maps, Mapquest) and the terms of use for your map base layer must be compatible with our CC-BY 4.0 license. 

Note: if you created the map in a software program like R or ArcGIS, please locate and indicate the source of the basemap shapefile onto which data has been plotted.

If your map was obtained from a copyrighted source please amend the figure so that the base map used is from an openly available source. Alternatively, please provide explicit written permission from the copyright holder granting you the right to publish the material under our CC-BY 4.0 license.

Please note that the following CC BY licenses are compatible with PLOS license: CC BY 4.0, CC BY 2.0 and CC BY 3.0, meanwhile such licenses as CC BY-ND 3.0 and others are not compatible due to additional restrictions. 

If you are unsure whether you can use a map or not, please do reach out and we will be able to help you. The following websites are good examples of where you can source open access or public domain maps: 

* U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) - All maps are in the public domain. (http://www.usgs.gov) 

* PlaniGlobe - All maps are published under a Creative Commons license so please cite “PlaniGlobe, http://www.planiglobe.com, CC BY 2.0” in the image credit after the caption. (http://www.planiglobe.com/?lang=enl) 

* Natural Earth - All maps are public domain. (http://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/)

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Overview

The paper by Wolkovich et al. describes the impacts of climate change on global winegrape climatic suitability over the last 30 years. To quantify the impacts of climate change for different geographical regions, the authors calculated climate metrics that spanned the annual plant cycle of a calendar year, including the dormancy, growing, budburst and harvest seasons. These climatic indices (GDD, GST, total precipitation during harvest month, etc.) have been used in many other articles and are well established in viticulture suitability studies. This research is timely given the cultural and economic importance of the wine industry in many countries and due to very specific annual climatic requirements to produce quality fruit. Furthermore, temperature and humidity regimes throughout the planet are changing because of global warming, thus it is important to understand how different temperature regimes may alter winegrape viability and quality and how grower may act to mitigate future climate change impacts.

General comments

Overall the manuscript is concisely written and contains new and significant scientific information that justify its publication. Its objective and results are well organized and described in a clear and intelligible format. The conclusions are properly supported by the results and figures. With moderate revision, I believe that this paper will be a highly valued contribution to PLOS Climate.

To calculate the climatic suitability indies, the authors relied on one air temperature (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures) and one precipitation (Global Precipitation Climatology Centre) datasets. Despite being used in a wide range of applications, these datasets have significant restrictions in terms of spatial resolution (1deg for the BEST, and 1 to 0.25deg for the GPCC), which limits the study’s practicality for a crop as sensitive to regional climate variations and topography as winegrapes. The authors state that “global efforts to adapt crops to climate change benefit from a global perspective, as one region may serve as a sentinel for other regions for adaptation”, however, decision making on adaptation strategies are mainly based on regional climate change projections. Furthermore, by relying on only one temperature dataset, the authors may have missed global warming signals in regions where observational data in BEST is scarce.

Another area of the manuscript that may requires revision is the Methods section. I found some parts of it difficult to follow, especially the part where the authors describe the phenology adjustment (page 4 and 5) used in the study. A few important aspects of the adjustment are lacking detail. It is not clear why the authors used for 1970-1979 period only (data availability issue), or how the limited budburst and veraison data, based primarily on European data, affects the phenology adjustment for South American and Asian vineyards. More description of the rationale behind the phenology adjustment is needed.

Specific comments

1) To increase the climate change signal in areas with limited observational coverage, I would recommend the authors to add another dataset to the analysis, as for example the University of Delaware climate data, the Climatic Research Unit data, Global Historical Climatology Network dataset, the Climate Prediction Center Global Unified Temperature dataset, and the Land ERA5 reanalysis with a resolution of 9 km. To simplify the calculations and analysis, the authors could calculate the ensemble average of 2 or 3 datasets, and use that ensemble average to calculate the suitability indices.

2) I would recommend the authors to revise the section describing the phenology adjustment in Methods for clarity. The authors could perhaps provide more detail on the adjustment methodology in the manuscript, instead of citing papers with such methodology. The authors should also try to explain the consequences of using European observational data to adjust phenology of plants cultivated elsewhere.

3) What is the definition of the residual mean square error (RMSE). Is it the same as the root mean square error? Please clarify.

Reviewer #2: Spatial scale of the study “Uneven impacts of climate change around the world and across the annual cycle of winegrapes” is indeed immense.

Considering the phenology of over 500 cultivars, research finds few differences in climate metrics derived from considering a region’s planted winegrapes versus assuming all regions plant 100% one variety i.e. Pinot noir. This finding connotes insignificant impact of winegrape diversity against the climate change. However, authors themselves have highlighted the cause of this finding. They assert that most regions are actually planting a highly limited diversity of winegrapes. The second cause given by the authors is the climate matrices considered in this research, which are common, widely-used and grower-relevant. All these metrics are either focused on integrating over long periods of the annual cycle or focus on metrics at the start or end of the growing season. One of the most important stages of winegrape’s life cycle is their flowering and veraison stage and authors expect larger effects of a region’s diversity with metrics related to these two events. Authors highlight that most currently used bioclimatic indicators for winegrapes do not include such metrics, which are actually critical to crop yield and quality and to how grapes perform during climate extremes. The third main reason pointed out is availability of data. They highlight that phenological diversity is certainly critical for resilient global winegrowing with climate change, however previous analyses generally have included a very limited slice of real diversity due to the challenge of obtaining sufficient phenological data to calibrate models.

This research applied leveraged phenological models with global data on cultivar plantings and an unparalleled research collection of varieties to overcome this challenge, including the phenological diversity of over 500 different varieties. As they themselves highlight that this still represents less than half the planted diversity because phenological data were not available for all varieties.

Thus, within the scope of its thesis, this is a perfect study. Research has wonderfully highlighted the future avenues of research in this arena. Paper is recommended for publication in its present form.

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Comments_J.docx

Uneven impacts of climate change around the world and across the annual cycle of winegrapes

PCLM-D-24-00266R1

Dear Dr. Wolkovich,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Uneven impacts of climate change around the world and across the annual cycle of winegrapes' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact climate@plos.org.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Noureddine Benkeblia, Dr. Sci., Dr. Agr.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

***********************************************************

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have provided satisfactory answers to the questions and concerns raised during the first round of review. They also managed to incorporate some of my suggestions and corrected the inaccuracies that were found in the original submission. I recommend that this revised version of the manuscript be accepted for publication.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

**********