Areas
covered by Koeppen classes
Jürgen Grieser, René Gommes, Stephen Cofield, Michele
Bernardi
The Agromet Group, SDRN
FAO of the UN, Viale delle Terme di
Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy
Juergen.grieser@fao.org
July 2006
The area of
land surface covered by Koeppen classes can easily be calculated from the
global rasterized Koeppen classification data of the world’s land surface. More
details are provided here.
Table 1
shows the area estimates for the major Koeppen classes using the whole 50 year
period and 3 datasets. It can be seen that on the global scale the results are
rather similar. Tables with more detailed results can be downloaded in csv
format.
Table 1:
Area covered by Koeppen climate classes in million square kilometers based on
the 50-year period 1951 – 2000. The links point to the detailed tables in csv
format. Greenland and Antarctica are excluded because of lack of data.
|
Precipitation
data source /Koeppen Class |
|
|
|
|
A |
29.375 |
29.525 |
29.615 |
|
B |
36.457 |
36.364 |
36.231 |
|
C |
21.917 |
22.057 |
22.068 |
|
D |
33.015 |
32.818 |
32.851 |
|
E |
7.253 |
7.253 |
7.253 |
Table 2:
Transitions in area coverage (in million square kilometers) of major Koeppen
classes between the periods 1951-1975 and 1976-2000 for CRU temperatures and
GPCC VASClimO precipitation.
|
Transition Matrix |
From |
||||||
|
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
Sum |
||
|
To |
A |
29.012 |
0.219 |
0.507 |
0 |
0 |
29.738 |
|
B |
0.556 |
35.066 |
0.672 |
0.164 |
0.015 |
36.473 |
|
|
C |
0.064 |
0.486 |
20.764 |
0.726 |
0.034 |
22.075 |
|
|
D |
0 |
0.096 |
0.074 |
31.987 |
0.55 |
32.708 |
|
|
E |
0 |
0.01 |
0.009 |
0.061 |
6.943 |
7.023 |
|
|
Sum |
29.632 |
35.877
|
22.027
|
32.938
|
7.543
|
128.017 |
|
Table 2
shows the extent of areas that were in a certain Koeppen class in the first
period 1951-1975 and shifted to another
one in the period 1976-2000.
While Table
1 provides information on the structural uncertainty of the estimates of
Koeppen classes with respect to the data sources, Table 2 provides information
on the differences of the covered area of different periods. Comparing Table 1
and Table 2 reveals that considerable transitions happened between the two
periods. The fluxes are mainly of the kind E à D, D à C, C à A, (manifesting global warming) and C à B, A à B (revealing an enlarged area
covered by dry climate). These transitions cover more than 500,000 km2
each[1].
This is considerably larger than the uncertainties provided in Table 1.
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