A simple mechanistic model is developed to forecast the minimum temperature reached by the aerial elements of a crop during nocturnal cooling. The model, whose inputs are meteorological data registered at sunset, has two main characteristics: (1) it uses as a framework a two-layer scheme of the surface–atmosphere interaction which allows one to make a clear difference between the temperature of the crop and the temperature of the soil surface; (2) it does not deal with the rather complex resolution of the non-steady-state regime that most of the physical models intend to solve numerically or analytically; it is based upon a static representation of the soil–plant–atmosphere system assumed to be representative of the conditions reached at the end of the night, when minimum temperatures usually occur. The outputs of the model, i.e. minimum crop and soil surface temperatures, are comp...

The Peruvian region of Ica is an important area ofgrapevine cultivation, mainly for the production of pisco, the flagship hard drink of Peru. The effects of a changing climate have been assessed using the recorded temperatures of a weather station together with projected climates for the 21st century generated under the A1B SRES scenario.