The most significant risk for viticulture is that the sugar content of the grapes will increase in the future due to rising temperatures. As a result, it will be possible to produce wines with increasing alcohol content in the future. Excessively high alcohol content can significantly reduce the wines’ marketability and viticulture’s profitability. Our study seeks to answer how the expected drought in the Southern and Central regions of Europe will affect the future change in the sugar content of grapes. The degree of dryness was examined using the dryness index in the study. Finally, it was analyzed how the dryness index affects the past and future occurrence of maximum sugar content for six grape varieties. The probability of the occurrence of maximum sugar content for most vine grape varieties will decrease in the near future. However, in the distant future, there is a likelihood that the occurrence of maximum sugar content will increase again. If we can maintain the DI ≥ −10 condition with regulated deficit irrigation, the probability of the occurrence of maximum sugar content may decrease significantly in the near future. Ensuring moderate dryness is the only way to achieve the proper sugar content.

Climate change is significantly impacting our agricultural crops and their cultivation areas, which are expected to change considerably by the end of the century. Temperature conditions decisively influence the safe suitability of grapes in a given location. To address these changes, we analysed the temporal changes of four temperature indicators: Average Growing Season Temperature (AGST), Growing Degree Days (GDD or Winkler index (GDD-WI), Huglin index (HI), and Biologically Effective Degree Days (BEDD) across 22 Hungarian wine regions from 1971 to 2100. The analysis was based on data from 14 climate models under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. To investigate the future suitability of wine grapes, we introduced the dynamic suitability function, which allowed us to analyse the suitability of the average temperature during the growing season for 21 wine grape varieties from 2031 to 2100 in decadal increments. Additionally, a temperature impact function was introduced to characterise the suitability of 21 wine grape varieties with values ranging from 0 to 1, based on the average temperature during the growing season. The results confirmed that the frequency of temperature indices used in grape cultivation will shift distinctly towards warmer climate classes in the future. The increasingly warmer climate presents certain advantages but also has growing cultivation risks. In the most optimistic scenario, the average temperature during the growing season may decrease by 0.8°C over the next seven decades. However, in the most pessimistic model, the change expected by the end of the century exceeds a 4.0°C increase. For wine grape varieties with lower heat requirements, suitability under the pessimistic RCP 8.5 emission scenario is projected to decrease by 29% by the end of the century. Conversely, under the optimistic scenarios, the decline in suitability values is only between 3-4%. For grape varieties with higher heat requirements, a 10% decrease in suitability is expected under the RCP 8.5 scenario. In contrast, the RCP 4.5 scenario suggests that suitability could improve by 1-2% by the end of the century. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the impacts and consequences of climate change and offer insights on how to prepare for these challenges in the viticulture sector.

The aim of our research was to identify the role of weather parameters in the development of the start date and length of blooming. In order to achieve this, we examined how meteorological conditions of a particular year influence the start date and length of blooming in different years (dry, wet, cool, hot, sunny, cloudy). The meteorological parameters were the following: maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature, precipitation, length of sunlight, difference of daytime and nightime temperatures, potential evaporation-PET, Huglin-index,Winkler-index, climatic water balance which can be calculated as a difference of precipitation and potential evaporation. In this study we wanted to find out whether early start of blooming results in a longer blooming period or if there is a generally faster blooming period when blooming starts later. Based on the results we can say that early start of blooming resulted in extended blooming period for three sour cherry varieties at the examined production sites. The start of blooming showed the closest relation with the difference of average daytime and nightime temperatures of the 30-day period prior to blooming. Significant relation was also detected with the thermic indexes as well as with maximum temperatures, climatic water balance and the degree of potential evaporation.We examined how weather 30 days prior and during blooming influenced the length of phases. Results showed that precipitation prior and during blooming is in significant relation with the length of blooming. We detected significant relation between daytime and nightime temperature differences and the length of blooming. The nature of the relation indicates that blooming periods were shorter in case of increasing temperature differences.We found that shorter blooming lengths occurred when maximum temperatures averaged between 13.5–14.5 ºC 30 days prior to blooming when examining the relation between blooming length and maximum temperature. If the average of maximum temperatures was below 13 ºC or exceeded 15 ºC during this period, then we could calculate with a blooming period longer than ten days. We proved that little precipitation and high temperature accelerates physiological processes, therefore we could calculate with an accelerated blooming and shorter blooming period.

Extreme weather increasingly disrupts European agriculture, yet no continent-wide, multi-hazard assessment has been available. This study provides the first pan-European, growing-season synthesis of agricultural climate hazards using the European Extreme Events Climate Index (E3CI)-applied here for the first time in risk assessment. The E3CI is a composite indicator of seven hazards (Warm, Cool, Drought, Fire, Hail, Precipitation, Wind) for 39 countries, 1981-2020. Changes are quantified with an endpoint decadal contrast (Δ = 2011-2020 - 1981-1990; April-October), and zonal (west-east) and meridional (north-south) gradients are evaluated. Uncertainty is assessed with moving-block bootstrap 95 % CIs, multiplicity controlled by FDR. The share of growing seasons with Warm rose from 6 % to 74 % (a 12-fold increase), while Cool declined from 31 % to 12 %. Drought frequency increased (8 → 13 cases/decade), as did fire (3 → 12). Severity rose sharply for fire (5 → 117) and increased for precipitation (8 → 22) and drought (11 → 22), while cold severity declined. Only Warm (97 % of countries) and, to a lesser extent, Drought exhibit widespread significant increases, whereas other hazards remain sporadic. Spatial contrasts are evident: bootstrap CIs and FDR tests reveal robust W-E and NS contrasts-Warm, Cool and Wind intensify more in Western/Northern Europe, whereas Drought, Precipitation, Hail and Fire strengthen in Eastern/Southern Europe. Spatial diagnostics confirm stable subregional clustering. Adaptation options include resilient crops, better water management, early-warning systems, while future research should integrate socio-economic factors and AI. E3CI thus provides a novel, reproducible framework for pan-European, multi-hazard agricultural risk assessment.

Daily Peczely circulation types are investigated over 140 years (1881–2020). After presenting monthly mean frequencies and durations of the 13 circulation types, two further questions are investigated: (i) How do the circulation types influence local weather extremes?; (ii) Are there significant trends in the frequency of the original and the grouped circulation types in the recent monotonically warming 50 year period (1971–2020)? The answers are as follows: (i) Four local weather extremes were investigated in nine grid-points of the Pannonian Basin and analyzed in the central months of the seasons. It was established that high precipitation and wind maxima occur in almost all circulation types and months, whereas for both high temperature maxima and low temperature minima, there are six circulation types, where no extremity occurred in one, two, or three investigated months. (ii) In the last 50 years, 37% of the linear seasonal frequency trends have been significant. However, these trends are rarely significant in the shorter monotonously warming (1911–1940) and cooling (1941–1970) 30-year periods. Therefore, the significant trends of the last 50 years are unlikely to be the direct consequences of the monotonous hemispherical warming. Since these hemispherical temperature trends are most likely caused by different sets of physical reasons, the reality of the presented circulation frequency trends needs to be validated by climate models.

In many regions, water availability influences grape yield fluctuations more than thermal conditions. This study analyzes dryness indices calculated from observed and simulated RCM data to establish statistical relationships with observed yield data, considered an indicator of food safety. Five dryness indices were analyzed: the number of days without rain, the maximum number of consecutive dry days, climatic water balance, dryness index, and vineyard water indicator. These indices were analyzed for three periods: 1986–2005 (recent past), 2016–2035 (near future) and 2081–2100 (distant future). After this analysis, quadratic regression connections were established between the indices and available wine grape yields in the 22 wine regions of Hungary for 2005–2021 without information on grape varieties and for 2017–2021 with data on grape varieties. Linear agro-technological trends were extracted from these wine grape yield series, whereas the residuals exhibited significant quadratic regression in slightly over 50% of the indices and regions, according to the F-test for the 17 year series. For the short series, these proportions are 29 and 27% for the selected seven white and seven red wine grapes. According to the most significant quadratic regressions, combined with the projected dryness indices, we can expect less average yields with higher interannual variability in the future.