Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification

Abstract. Although now over 100 years old, the classification of climate originally formulated by Wladimir Koppen and modified by his collaborators and successors, is still in widespread use. It is widely used in teaching school and undergraduate courses on climate. It is also still in regular use by researchers across a range of disciplines as a basis for climatic regionalisation of variables and for assessing the output of global climate models. Here we have produced a new global map of climate using the Koppen-Geiger system based on a large global data set of long-term monthly precipitation and temperature station time series. Climatic variables used in the Koppen-Geiger system were calculated at each station and interpolated between stations using a two-dimensional (latitude and longitude) thin-plate spline with tension onto a 0.1°×0.1° grid for each continent. We discuss some problems in dealing with sites that are not uniquely classified into one climate type by the Koppen-Geiger system and assess the outcomes on a continent by continent basis. Globally the most common climate type by land area is BWh (14.2%, Hot desert) followed by Aw (11.5%, Tropical savannah). The updated world Koppen-Geiger climate map is freely available electronically in the Supplementary Material Section.

[1]  W. Köppen.  Das geographische System der Klimate , 1936 .

[2]  C. W. Thornthwaite.  Problems in the Classification of Climates , 1943 .

[3]  Alan H. Strahler,et al.  Physical Geography: Science and Systems of the Human Environment , 1954 .

[4]  X. Markenscoff,et al.  Earth Sciences , 1965, Nature.

[5]  A. Wilcock.  KÖPPEN AFTER FIFTY YEARS , 1968 .

[6]  J. Gentilli.  Climates of Australia and New Zealand , 1971 .

[7]  H. MITAOVA,et al.  General Variational Approach to the Interpolation Problem , 1988 .

[8]  Thomas A. McMahon,et al.  Global Runoff: Continental Comparisons of Annual Flows and Peak Discharges , 1992 .

[9]  Robert Sausen,et al.  The Köppen climate classification as a diagnostic tool for general circulation models , 1993 .

[10]  R. Fovell,et al.  Climate zones of the conterminous United States defined using cluster analysis , 1993 .

[11]  A. Tsonis,et al.  Assessing the ability of the Köppen system to delineate the general world pattern of climates , 1994 .

[12]  R. Vose,et al.  An Overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network Temperature Database , 1997 .

[13]  M. Sanderson.  The Classification of Climates from Pythagoras to Koeppen , 1999 .

[14]  Harvey Stern,et al.  Objective classification of Australian climates , 1999 .

[15]  K. Fraedrich,et al.  A Green Planet Versus a Desert World: Estimating the Maximum Effect of Vegetation on the Land Surface Climate , 2000 .

[16]  K. Fraedrich,et al.  Climate Shifts during the Last Century , 2001 .

[17]  Muyin Wang,et al.  Detecting Arctic Climate Change Using KÖppen Climate Classification , 2003 .

[18]  Jaroslava Kalvová,et al.  Köppen Climate Types in Observed and Simulated Climates , 2003 .

[19]  Murray C. Peel,et al.  Continental differences in the variability of annual runoff-update and reassessment , 2004 .

[20]  Francis W. Zwiers,et al.  Detecting and attributing external influences on the climate system: a review of recent advances , 2005 .

[21]  B. Rudolf,et al.  World Map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification updated , 2006 .

[22]  Ranz,et al.  World Map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification updated — Source link , 2006 .

[23]  Christopher Daly,et al.  Guidelines for assessing the suitability of spatial climate data sets , 2006 .

[24]  Ronald J. Stouffer,et al.  Diagnosing atmosphere‐ocean general circulation model errors relevant to the terrestrial biosphere using the Köppen climate classification , 2006 .