Background
Interreg VI-A POCTEP
The project is part of Action A.1.1 of the Interreg VI-A POCTEP programme (Spain-Portugal Cross-Border Cooperation Programme), developed at the Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), supported by a research fellowship (BI/UTAD/46/2026). The goal is to build a climate and agroclimatic atlas covering five intervention zones across Portugal and Spain from the outset.
Objectives
What the project delivers
Two complementary outputs: an atlas — the complete, systematic set of climate data and maps for the territory — and an interactive platform to explore that data by zone, period and climate scenario. The platform is already available; the full atlas, including the crop-specific bioclimatic indices, is being built together with the research team.
The same data pipeline and validation methodology is applied consistently across all five zones, as real climate and administrative data becomes available for each.
Target crops
Four priority crops
The agroclimatic analysis focuses on the crops with the greatest economic and cultural relevance for the region.
Grapevine
The Douro region's flagship crop — the most extensively studied in terms of viticultural bioclimatic indices.
Olive
Sensitive to chilling requirements and frost risk.
Almond
Early flowering, making it particularly exposed to late frost events.
Cherry
Also sensitive to chilling requirements and water availability.
Methodology
Data and scientific transparency
The historical baseline (1981-2010) uses CHELSA v2.1 climatologies, matched against official administrative boundaries — Portugal's Carta Administrativa Oficial (CAOP) and Eurostat's NUTS boundaries (GISCO) for Spain. The project's first set of crop-specific bioclimatic and agroclimatic indices — 129 indices covering the historical baseline and two future scenarios (SSP1-2.6 and SSP5-8.5, 2041-2070) — was calculated by the project's research team and is already integrated into the Climate Atlas, with additional projection periods to follow. The exact future climate dataset behind those scenarios, and which Global Climate Models (GCMs) it uses, remain pending confirmation from the research team. The project explicitly documents what has been validated and what remains pending, rather than presenting unconfirmed work as final.