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Thread: The Köppen–Geiger climate classification made simpler (I hope so)

  1. #11
    Guild Grand Master Azélor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pixie View Post
    Yeah, that's the basic reasoning I think. That's what made me review the whole process - I am now going combo by combo, it becomes a huge table.
    5 january temperature levels x 6 january rain levels x 5 july temperatures x 6 july rain levels.... 900 entries.
    The original idea is to simplify climate prediction, 900 entries isn't simplifying. Still a work in progress...


    Did I say I am a science teacher? This is easy, when most of the rain falls in winter, moisture is available for longer. Thus, the location with rain in the summer is the driest.
    However... plants metabolism is very dependent on sunlight, so the location with rain in summer may have more vegetation cover as both factors for plant growth coincide, and a dry hot summer requires plants adapted to drought, which normally means smaller leaves and slower growth rate.
    I think we need to make things complicated in order to understand the simples rules that makes the system. With some advanced statistics, we might be able to find interesting informations. I would like to see the file when it's done if possible.

    I got 10 temperature levels, what are your temperature levels?
    Last edited by Azélor; 08-24-2015 at 02:11 PM.

  2. #12
    Guild Artisan Pixie's Avatar
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    Table isn't finished, but here's what I mean:
    Click image for larger version. 

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    Table is being made in an excel file and the result exported to pdf like you see here. Starting point should be january temperature, then using magic wand on intercept, user would shorten selection with january rain, then july temperature, then july rain... (and, to cover the whole map, repeat that 900 times!)

    Any ideas are very welcome at this point.

    Also, as you can see, there are lots of combos which I have doubts about or which, even if I apparently don't have doubts I am plainly wrong about.
    If you have time, please give it a look - so far I only have these.

  3. #13
    Guild Grand Master Azélor's Avatar
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    I'm trying to classify the Dsb climate using your classification but I'm not sure how to.

    • Precipitations: moderate
    o Summers = wet
    o Winters= dry
    • Average monthly temperature between -25 °C and 28 °C
    o Summer: mild to hot
    o Winter: very cold to cold

    the problem I'm having is that I know how much precipitation are required yearly but not for the specific seasons.
    I think I might have an idea, but it could make the numbers above useless.
    Last edited by Azélor; 08-24-2015 at 02:14 PM.

  4. #14
    Guild Artisan Pixie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Azelor View Post
    I'm trying to classify the Dsb climate using your classification but I'm not sure how to.

    • Precipitations: moderate
    o Summers = wet
    o Winters= dry
    • Average monthly temperature between -25 °C and 28 °C
    o Summer: mild to hot
    o Winter: very cold to cold
    You're doing it again... Dsb means "dry summer"
    I would make it warm summer with arid or semi-arid conditions (low/dry rain patterns) and very cold winter with humid conditions (any kind of rain pattern except "dry" gives humid conditions in a very cold season)
    A mild summer would make it Dsc... A hot summer would make it Dsa... this is the sort of reasoning I am making in building the table.

  5. #15
    Guild Grand Master Azélor's Avatar
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    I have another idea. It will make it easier to decide if one climate is winter/summer dry or forever wet.

    first we need to set these assumptions:

    It’s in the northern hemisphere: july is in summer and january is in winter
    January is always the coldest month
    July is always the hottest month
    January is the driest month of the year (w=winter dry)
    July is always the driest month of the year (s=summer dry)



    f: precipitation levels are either on the same category, 1 category down or up.
    w and s: they are separated by at least one category

    example: Pixiland receive 30mm of rain in January and 70mm in July. =f because they are just 1 category apart.
    Azelor Town receive 15mm in July but 75 mm in January. It's a dry summer, category 20-40 is separating each seasons.

    Both climate could be considered humid, maybe one is more humid than the other but that's not too important.
    That way, it's simpler than the : precipitation < 1/3 of the wettest winter month
    and the numbers are not very different.
    Last edited by Azélor; 08-24-2015 at 02:17 PM.

  6. #16
    Guild Artisan Pixie's Avatar
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    I see what you mean, and that makes it very easy to decide between a s-climate, a w-climate or a f-climate. But, that's 10 levels of rain.

    Say.. we keep the 6 levels of temperature as the current system gave pretty matching results in my test with ascanius and add more levels of rain.
    Instead of the existing 7, we add two more levels (could we merge the 0-5 with the 5-10?). The current process gives 7 levels, but I ignore the 6th and 7th.
    This can be done adding two layers in the present composition of rain patterns and I think it can be done in a few different ways.
    This could work, but it now becomes a 6 x 6 x 9 x 9 set of combinations.... 2916 different combos. That's complex enough, but we're getting to the point where it is impractical.

    If I may say, Azelor, you are focused on getting accurate at a given point, knowing the exact conditions, whereas I am focused in getting an overall map of the land. What are we trying to reach here?
    Last edited by Pixie; 07-30-2014 at 07:05 PM.

  7. #17
    Guild Artisan Pixie's Avatar
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    This post got me thinking about how short is a 6 tier classification for mean temperature... You are using 11 different ratings in this and yet, there are some temperature combos present in more than one kind of climate, which means it becomes useless for classification means if there isn't more information as the same temperature range can be found in two of the climates...

    So I thought the way to counter this sort of lists where we get confused is to use a 2-entry table. So I sat down and made one, I went for an 8 tier classification, including your terms "cool" and "severely cold". More than 8 is too much in my opinion.
    So this is it. This table would be the source for classifying the entire thing according to temperature (precipitation/humidity) would come at a later stage.

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	temperatures_key.pdf 
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    question 1:
    what do you guys think of the use of a 2-entry table?

    question 2:
    and what about the actual key used to fill in each position?

    note:
    cold deserts and cold steppes are a miss in this table, as their temperature ranges would be more in the tune with a D-climate - they would have to be determined separately.

    note 2:
    instead of terming the table X/Y axis as july and january, it could be termed as hottest month vs. coldest month, and then the classifications in each position wouldn't have to be symmetrical, allowing more flexibility - but at the same time, doubling the workload for the user, as it meant working the two hemispheres in separate.

  8. #18
    Guild Grand Master Azélor's Avatar
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    I do like your table, it look simple and clean.

    The keys look alright to me so far.





    I need to go back to what I said initially that was : when climates get colder, less precipitation is require to stay wet.

    We have that formula: Precipitation= temperature/2 (+something)
    So, every time you move by 2 temperature categories, the minimum rain required move by one
    In photoshop, this could translate in having another layer. The original if for the total precipitation, we don't change that. The second and new layer is a modifier added to the original. It take in consideration that more rain is required in hotter climate to stay wet. The first serves only as a reference representing total precipitations and the second represent the ''wetness level'' or ''relative precipitation''?
    It could be done by making colder climates appear wetter using the same color scheme as the original.
    Last edited by Azélor; 08-24-2015 at 02:53 PM.

  9. #19
    Guild Artisan Pixie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Azelor View Post
    We have that formula: Precipitation= temperature/2 (+something)
    So, every time you move by 2 temperature categories, the minimum rain required move by one
    It doesn't. It is a linear relationship, it changes the scale (temperature and precipitation are measured in different units anyway), but not the progression. The graphs you showed earlier (temperature vs. precipitation) had that straight line. Twice as much temperature requires twice as much precipitation for the same level of "wetness".

    Quote Originally Posted by Azelor View Post
    In photoshop, this could translate in having another layer. (...) . The first serves only as a reference representing total precipitations and the second represent the ''wetness level'' or ''relative precipitation''?
    That's what I was trying with the "available humidity" map and the column called "humidity" in that reference table. Still, I admit having only arid/semi-arid/humid is too short to accurately classify climates - it's well enough to determine deserts but insufficient for anything else.

    Quote Originally Posted by Azelor View Post
    What should we use for precipitation level?

    if I use the holdridge precipitation on the right combine with a possible equivalent on the left.
    very wet/ super humid
    wet/ per humid
    moderate/ humid
    steppe?/ sub humid
    steppe/ semi arid
    steppe/ arid
    desert/ per arid
    desert/ super arid
    I'll try to come up with a second 2-entry table adding up mean temperature and precipitation pattern. I mean, if I understand your idea (and if this is it I am for it), we will have three maps:
    1. mean temperature
    2. precipitation pattern
    3. "wetness level" / "available humidity" / "humidity" (pick your preferred denomination, I vote for "humidity")

    Climate regions would then be determined by finding particular combos of mean temperature and humidity.

  10. #20
    Guild Artisan Pixie's Avatar
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    Great effort there, Azelor. That will help a lot in developing that reference table I mentioned earlier. I am still most worried with the sheer number of possible combinations...

    But, I thought of a possible solution. This is a question for expert PSP/Gimp users, as well... If there was a way to set up a filter, in photoshop, that would do a look up based on the color of a pixel in different layers and paint the result of the lookup in a separate layer (did I explain myself in a legible way?) - then we would automate a part of the process.

    I mean, automating this tedious task:
    - if #color in layer "january mean temperature" is X and #color in layer "january precipitation" is Y and #color in layer ".... (etc.) then #color in layer "CLIMATES" becomes ZZ.

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