Relavence of the Grape

www.farella.com
I think this is pretty interesting.  This graphic looks a lot like the sun, manipulated by yours truly for this post.  It is derived from a data list that I found while doing my usual science and global warming trolling on the internet.  This chart is, actually, from a data list that our own U.S. government posted on it's "Paleoclimatology" website (here).  I was a little shocked and amused to see a heading for an article titled "grape ripening as a past climate indicator."  Interesting enough to click through, for sure.  The fun part was that the data is from Burgundy, France going back a mere...  630 YEARS!  Wow.  The data was based on harvest date relative to September first for each year.  The range of dates ends up to 50 days past Sept. 1 and only a few times before September 1.  The earliest ever in the time span was the last year of the data, 2003, which was 13 days before September 1.  That is pretty significant and, in the arguments for human-caused global warming, this is certainly a scary signpost.

So, to explain my graphic a little, what you are seeing is an Excel spreadsheet of the data turned into a graph that is a little like a clock.  High noon would be year 1 (1370 A.D.) and 11:59 is 2003 for the end of the data list.  I was playing with the graphs and came up with this one for the purposes of trying to visualize the immensity of the data.  After I set it up and saw this radiating pattern, I made it yellow just for kicks.  In the picture the fuzzy edge is really just numbers of the years (x-axis) all scrunched together and the date ranges are the concentric circles (y-axis).  If you're wondering how I have so much time for this sort of thing, I don't.  It was pretty easy to do and I think it's very telling and kinda pretty. 

Now, the Paleoclimatology folks who authored the paper used the harvest dates to infer temperature data for their purposes.  I was enthralled that our little wine industry has so much influence in such a complicated study.  As if the health benefits of having a little wine with dinner weren't enough, we aficionados of the grape are helping guide scientists through the maze of history.

Comments

[Tyler T]

Let me first say that I am not one of those people who argue that global warming is a farce. However, its difficult to make any conclusions from your graph. It appears the harvest date is just as random in the last 100 years as it was in the first, no? Perhaps it is difficult to see becuase of the size of the image. Oh well. Nevertheless it is an interesting point to look into globally - harvest dates that is. Cheers,
t

[tom farella]

Thanks for the comment, T.

I agree with you that harvest dates are all over the map and the most notable data point vis a vis global warming was the 2003 date. If you click through the link in the post you can see more detail. I can see that global warming is real but human-created or no is my biggest question. A few degrees change for a big old planet seems reasonable to me.

Tom