Swedish wine

Lauri Pappinen can be happy. In 1997, the former computer specialist started growing wine on the Swedish island of Gotland. At the time, many wondered about his crazy idea. Today, Pappinen’s winery is a thriving business that has even found imitators.

No wine could thrive above the 50th parallel, it was once said. This wisdom is long outdated: Europe’s northernmost winery is in Sweden, on the island of Gotland. For a long time, software specialist Lauri Pappinen dreamed of having his own vineyard; that is why he experimented with vines for several years. This was necessary because there was no experience with viticulture in the far north and not all grape varieties feel comfortable on the windy island. As is well known, exceptions prove the rule: in the meantime, white and even red grapes thrive on his “GuteVin” vineyard.

The fact that Pappinen can walk through Swedish vines today is mainly due to the balanced maritime climate on Gotland and climate change. The Baltic Sea ensures balanced temperatures. And the water temperature of the Baltic Sea has risen by 0.8 degrees since 1990, that of the Gotland Sea by as much as two degrees. This warming favours viticulture and causes the northern wine-growing border to slide ever higher. Swedish wine is not cheap, however: a bottle costs about 30 euros. But for that, this wine enjoyment still has rarity value.

Is malaria returning to Germany?

Global warming is shifting the climate zones. Due to the rising temperatures, the Anopheles mosquito is spreading south of the Main again. The insect lives in wetlands and can transmit malaria. Until 70 years ago, people in Germany were still dying from this disease, which is also known as swamp fever. Since then, malaria was considered extinct in this country and a tropical disease. Climate change could change that in the future. However, scientists do not yet see any reason for concern: even if an Anopheles mosquito were to carry the actual malaria pathogen, it is still far from warm enough in Germany for it to spread en masse. Moreover, the good medical care in this country would prevent an epidemic.

What are climate zones?

In the morning cloudy to partly cloudy with showers. In the afternoon the sun will shine, with temperatures between 16 and 22 degrees”, this may be the weather forecast for southern Germany. The forecast is interesting for us because the weather is constantly changing. It is different with the climate, because that remains. Climate means the average weather of a region over a longer period of time. For example, the climate at the equator is hot and humid all year round. At the North Pole, on the other hand, temperatures are freezing and there is little precipitation. Between the equator and the poles, there are areas where it can be very changeable, just like here. But why is it that the climate on Earth is so different?

The sun’s radiation is not equally strong everywhere on earth. How intensively it heats the earth depends on the angle of the sun’s radiation and thus on the latitude. Because the sun is almost vertical all year round near the equator, the earth is heated very strongly here. Towards the poles, the sun’s rays strike at an increasingly shallow angle: The same solar energy is distributed over an ever larger area. Therefore, the greater the distance to the equator, the cooler it becomes. This creates regions with different climates, the climate zones.

According to the strength of the sun’s rays, four different climate zones can be divided on the mainland of the earth: The tropics around the equator, the subtropics (from the Latin word “sub” for “under”) between the 23rd and 40th degrees of latitude, the temperate zone of our latitudes and the polar regions around the North and South Poles. Like belts, these climatic zones run in an east-west direction around the earth.

However, the climate does not only depend on the latitude, other influences also play a role. For example, there is snow on Mount Kilimanjaro even though it is in the tropics. The fact that its summit is icy is due to the fact that the temperature drops with increasing altitude. Mountain climates are therefore always cooler than lower-lying areas.

The distance to the sea also affects the climate: Water can store solar heat longer than land. It also warms up more slowly than the land. As a result, seawater acts as a buffer for temperatures. The climate is therefore mild near the coast. Inland, this heat balance is missing and the climate is continental, with temperatures fluctuating much more than in the maritime climate near the sea.

From rainforest to tundra – vegetation zones

Trees and deciduous forests can thrive well in cool and humid areas. Where it is particularly hot and dry, on the other hand, hardly anything grows: deserts form there. Only plants that are as well adapted to this extreme climate as cacti have a chance to survive here.

Plants depend on the climate: where which species are at home is determined above all by the temperature and the amount of precipitation. That is why there are many different regions on earth with specific plant communities: the vegetation zones. Because the type of vegetation depends on the climate, these vegetation zones, similar to the climate zones, run roughly parallel to the equator.

The typical vegetation zones include, for example, the rainforest in the ever-humid tropics. With increasing distance from the equator, the grasslands of the savannahs, on which trees and shrubs also thrive in isolated cases, are the typical vegetation. Towards the poles, the subtropics follow with deserts and semi-deserts, the special plants of the alternating and ever-humid subtropics, the deciduous and mixed forests of the temperate latitudes and the coniferous forests of the cold temperate zone. In the areas around the poles, only particularly hardy shrubs, mosses and lichens grow. This last vegetation zone before the polar desert of ice is called tundra.

The boundaries of the vegetation zones are not always easy to recognise; their transitions are fluid. This is also due to the fact that humans have an influence on the plant world: By clearing forests, cultivating the land and building cities, they change the original vegetation. If you want to describe which plants are actually
growing at the moment, you also talk about ecozones.

Freezing cold or scorching heat are rare here. Extreme temperatures are rarely measured in the temperate zone. Precipitation falls all year round: in summer as rain or hail, in the cold season sometimes as snow. Germany is also located in these temperate latitudes, which lie between the subtropics and the polar regions.

In the northern hemisphere, western and central Europe are part of the temperate latitudes, as well as the central part of North America and central Asia. This climate zone covers a much smaller area in the southern hemisphere: New Zealand, south-eastern Australia, southern Africa and South America are part of it. More than a third of the world’s population lives in the temperate latitudes, especially the highly developed industrial nations such as the USA, Japan, China and many European countries.

Spring, summer, autumn and winter – distinct seasons are a special feature of the temperate zone. Because temperatures change with the rhythm of the seasons, vegetation has adapted. To survive the frost in winter, deciduous trees shed their leaves in autumn and form new ones in spring. Conifers are particularly well protected against severe cold by the wax layer of their needles. Deciduous and mixed forests are the typical vegetation in temperate latitudes.

The closer we get to the poles, the colder it gets. In this cold-temperate zone with its long winters, it is mainly conifers that grow because they are particularly well adapted to icy temperatures. In the northern hemisphere, there is therefore a broad belt of coniferous forests in large parts of Canada and Russia, also known as the taiga.

Typical for the temperate zone is: the further inland you go, the drier it gets. While it rains a lot all year round in Brest, France, on the Atlantic Ocean, it is much drier in Siberia, far inland on the continent. There, the temperature differences between summer and winter are also much higher. Such a dry climate with strong temperature fluctuations is called a continental climate. Because of the great aridity, hardly any forest grows here. In contrast, there are more steppes – also called prairies (North America) or pampas (South America), depending on the region. In some places it is so dry that semi-deserts and deserts have formed, such as the Gobi in Central Asia.

Global warming

The earth is getting warmer and warmer. In the last hundred years alone, the average temperature has risen by almost one degree Celsius. The main reason for this warming is the increased amount of carbon dioxide in the air. This increase in CO2 is mainly caused by the industrialised countries through the burning of oil, gas and coal.

Plants, on the other hand, have a protective effect on the climate. They can absorb carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into organic compounds during photosynthesis. Tropical forests store a particularly large amount of carbon dioxide. However, because large areas of forest are being cleared in the tropics, this storage function is becoming smaller and smaller. Because where there are no more trees, no more carbon dioxide is extracted from the air. The greenhouse effect increases, the atmosphere warms up.

So will we soon be swimming in the bathing lake instead of sledging in winter? Difficult to predict. Scientists are trying to calculate how many degrees Celsius the earth will heat up in the future with the help of computer models. According to these models, the average temperature on Earth could rise by another one to six degrees by the year 2100. How the temperature curve will actually develop depends above all on whether the proportion of carbon dioxide continues to rise.

Serious consequences of climate change can already be seen: Ice masses are melting, sea levels are rising, storms and droughts are increasing. This makes it all the more important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO2. Because this trace gas remains in the atmosphere for a long time. Only if we blow less of it into the atmosphere can man-made climate change at least be slowed down.

Some industrialised countries have therefore committed themselves to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and not to exceed certain CO2 levels. But despite a whole series of climate summits, the global community has not yet succeeded in slowing down the rise of carbon dioxide in the air.