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.

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Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification

The most frequently used climate classification map is that o f Wladimir Koppen, presented in its latest version 1961 by Rudolf Geiger. A huge number of climate studies and subsequent publications adopted this or a former release of the Koppen-Geiger map. While the climate classification concept has been widely applied to a broad range of topics in climate and climate change research as well as in physical geography, hydrology, agriculture, biology and educational aspects, a well-documented update of the world climate classification map is still missing. Based on recent data sets from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia and the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) at the German Weather Service, we present here a new digital Koppen-Geiger world map on climate classification, valid for the second half of the 20 th century. Zusammenfassung Die am haufigsten verwendete Klimaklassifikationskarte ist jene von Wladimir Koppen, die in der letzten Auflage von Rudolf Geiger aus dem Jahr 1961 vorliegt. Seither bildeten viele Klimabucher und Fachartikel diese oder eine fruhere Ausgabe der Koppen-Geiger Karte ab. Obwohl das Schema der Klimaklassifikation in vielen Forschungsgebieten wie Klima und Klimaanderung aber auch physikalische Geographie, Hydrologie, Landwirtschaftsforschung, Biologie und Ausbildung zum Einsatz kommt, fehlt bis heute eine gut dokumentierte Aktualisierung der Koppen-Geiger Klimakarte. Basierend auf neuesten Datensatzen des Climatic Research Unit (CRU) der Universitat von East Anglia und des Weltzentrums fur Niederschlagsklimatologie (WZN) am Deutschen Wetterdienst prasentieren wir hier eine neue digitale Koppen-Geiger Weltkarte fur die zweite Halfte des 20. Jahrhunderts.

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World Map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification updated

Koppen's climate classification remains the most widely used system by geographical and climatological societies across the world, with well recognized simple rules and climate symbol letters. In Brazil, climatology has been studied for more than 140 years, and among the many proposed methods Koppen 0 s system remains as the most utilized. Considering Koppen's climate classification importance for Brazil (geography, biology, ecology, meteorology, hydrology, agronomy, forestry and environmental sciences), we developed a geographical information system to identify Koppen's climate types based on monthly temperature and rainfall data from 2,950 weather stations. Temperature maps were spatially described using multivariate equations that took into account the geographical coordinates and altitude; and the map resolution (100 m) was similar to the digital elevation model derived from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. Patterns of rainfall were interpolated using kriging, with the same resolution of temperature maps. The final climate map obtained for Brazil (851,487,700 ha) has a high spatial resolution (1 ha) which allows to observe the climatic variations at the landscape level. The results are presented as maps, graphs, diagrams and tables, allowing users to interpret the occurrence of climate types in Brazil. The zones and climate types are referenced to the most important mountains, plateaus and depressions, geographical landmarks, rivers and watersheds and major cities across the country making the information accessible to all levels of users. The climate map not only showed that the A, B and C zones represent approximately 81%, 5% and 14% of the country but also allowed the identification of Koppen's climates types never reported before in Brazil.

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Köppen's climate classification map for Brazil

Investigating soil moisture-climate interactions in a changing climate: A review

We present new global maps of the Koppen-Geiger climate classification at an unprecedented 1-km resolution for the present-day (1980–2016) and for projected future conditions (2071–2100) under climate change. The present-day map is derived from an ensemble of four high-resolution, topographically-corrected climatic maps. The future map is derived from an ensemble of 32 climate model projections (scenario RCP8.5), by superimposing the projected climate change anomaly on the baseline high-resolution climatic maps. For both time periods we calculate confidence levels from the ensemble spread, providing valuable indications of the reliability of the classifications. The new maps exhibit a higher classification accuracy and substantially more detail than previous maps, particularly in regions with sharp spatial or elevation gradients. We anticipate the new maps will be useful for numerous applications, including species and vegetation distribution modeling. The new maps including the associated confidence maps are freely available via www.gloh2o.org/koppen
 . Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format)

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Present and future Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps at 1-km resolution

. This guide to estimating daily and monthly actual, potential, reference crop and pan evaporation covers topics that are of interest to researchers, consulting hydrologists and practicing engineers. Topics include estimating actual evaporation from deep lakes and from farm dams and for catchment water balance studies, estimating potential evaporation as input to rainfall-runoff models, and reference crop evapotranspiration for small irrigation areas, and for irrigation within large irrigation districts. Inspiration for this guide arose in response to the authors' experiences in reviewing research papers and consulting reports where estimation of the actual evaporation component in catchment and water balance studies was often inadequately handled. Practical guides using consistent terminology that cover both theory and practice are not readily available. Here we provide such a guide, which is divided into three parts. The first part provides background theory and an outline of the conceptual models of potential evaporation of Penman, Penman–Monteith and Priestley–Taylor, as well as discussions of reference crop evapotranspiration and Class-A pan evaporation. The last two sub-sections in this first part include techniques to estimate actual evaporation from (i) open-surface water and (ii) landscapes and catchments (Morton and the advection-aridity models). The second part addresses topics confronting a practicing hydrologist, e.g. estimating actual evaporation for deep lakes, shallow lakes and farm dams, lakes covered with vegetation, catchments, irrigation areas and bare soil. The third part addresses six related issues: (i) automatic (hard wired) calculation of evaporation estimates in commercial weather stations, (ii) evaporation estimates without wind data, (iii) at-site meteorological data, (iv) dealing with evaporation in a climate change environment, (v) 24 h versus day-light hour estimation of meteorological variables, and (vi) uncertainty in evaporation estimates. This paper is supported by a Supplement that includes 21 sections enhancing the material in the text, worked examples of many procedures discussed in the paper, a program listing (Fortran 90) of Morton's WREVAP evaporation models along with tables of monthly Class-A pan coefficients for 68 locations across Australia and other information.

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Estimating actual, potential, reference crop and pan evaporation using standard meteorological data: a pragmatic synthesis

Application and testing of the simple rainfall-runoff model SIMHYD.

Changing hydrological conditions due to climate, land use and infrastructure pose significant ongoing challenges to the hydrological research and water management communities. While, traditionally, hydrological models have assumed stationary conditions, there has been much progress since 2005 on model parameter estimation under unknown or changed conditions and on techniques for modelling in those conditions. There is an analogy between extrapolation in space (termed Prediction in Ungauged Basins, PUB), and extrapolation in time (termed Prediction in Ungauged Climates, PUC) that can be exploited for estimating model parameters. Methods for modelling changing hydrological conditions need to progress beyond the current scenario approach, which is reliant upon precalibrated models. Top-down methods and analysis of spatial gradients of a variable of interest, instead of temporal gradients (a method termed ‘Trading space for time’) show much promise for validating more complex model projections. Understanding ...

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Hydrological modelling in a changing world

Most current long-term (decadal and longer) hydrological predictions implicitly assume that hydrological processes are stationary even under changing climate. However, in practice, we suspect that changing climatic conditions may affect runoff generation processes and cause changes in the rainfall-runoff relationship. In this article, we investigate whether temporary but prolonged (i.e., of the order of a decade) shifts in rainfall result in changes in rainfall-runoff relationships at the catchment scale. Annual rainfall and runoff records from south-eastern Australia are used to examine whether interdecadal climate variability induces changes in hydrological behavior. We test statistically whether annual rainfall-runoff relationships are significantly different during extended dry periods, compared with the historical norm. The results demonstrate that protracted drought led to a significant shift in the rainfall-runoff relationship in ∼44% of the catchment-dry periods studied. The shift led to less annual runoff for a given annual rainfall, compared with the historical relationship. We explore linkages between cases where statistically significant changes occurred and potential explanatory factors, including catchment properties and characteristics of the dry period (e.g., length, precipitation anomalies). We find that long-term drought is more likely to affect transformation of rainfall to runoff in drier, flatter, and less forested catchments. Understanding changes in the rainfall-runoff relationship is important for accurate streamflow projections and to help develop adaptation strategies to deal with multiyear droughts.

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Murray C. Peel

Papers

Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification

Estimating actual, potential, reference crop and pan evaporation using standard meteorological data: a pragmatic synthesis

Application and testing of the simple rainfall-runoff model SIMHYD.

Hydrological modelling in a changing world

The influence of multiyear drought on the annual rainfall-runoff relationship: An Australian perspective†