A new study finds a strong chance that climate change helped trigger the recent catastrophe that hit France’s wine industry.

Driving the news: An extraordinary cold snap that gripped France in early April, just after a record-warm early spring, devastated grapes and other fruit crops.

• New analysis by the research consortium World Weather Attribution shows that climate change made that disaster — a textbook example of a “false spring” event — up to 60% more likely.

Why it matters: As the world warms, growing seasons are shifting their timing, and frosts are changing their frequency and severity, too. The interaction between the two is making prized crops more vulnerable to large temperature swings.

How it works: Researchers focused on central France, in a region known for its Champagne.

• They ran computer model simulations of the weather patterns that led to that event.
• Some simulations included the current amount of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, while others omitted these concentrations.
• The models showed that climate change made April’s cold snap less likely as the lowest temperatures have risen […]