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I'd probably start with the world's major biomes and try to come up with categories that encompass them reasonably well.
For example I'd like to see the deciduous forest climates in which plant growth more or less stops over winter of much of western, central and eastern Europe, eastern North America, Korea, Japan etc brought under a broad category (with subdivisions of course) but firmly excluding the likes of Bogotá, Durban, Sydney or Auckland as not getting cool enough in winter (or any time for a more or less equatorial climate like Bogotá).
Basically the cooler to cold winter Köppen C climates separated from the warmer winter ones and combined with some D climates.
I think it's a mess. We end up with too many categories.
I counted a maximum of 82 climate types, and going up to 97 if we consider the optional ones (obviously there must be quite a bit which don't occur naturally).
The idea of making up a classification is grouping the units in various sets, not making up a set for every unit.
A more interesting exercise would be putting a limit in the amount of climate types before designing the system, so we have to carefully think what we could do to make it detailed enough without looking excessively broad or lazy. For instance, try to create a climate system with only 10 types. Then enhance it to 15 or 20. Köppen has 30 types, why not rearranging these 30 into a less disperse grouping?
The main reason my system has so many subgroups is because my steppe and desert climates are divided by which temperature regime they fall into. So a tropical semi-arid climate would be AZ_, while a temperate arid climate would be CR_.
If i had to reduce the number of possible types, i would get rid of all temperature distinctions for tropical climates aside from “equatorial” and “non-equatorial”, and maybe also get rid of the third letter for dry climates. After making these changes, this is the number of base climate types:
Afe Afa Ame Ama Awe Awa Ase Asa AZ AR
Bfa Bfb Bsa Bsb Bwa Bwb BZ BR
Cfa Cfb Csa Csb Cwa Cwb CZ CR
Dfa Dfb Dsa Dsb Dwa Dwb DZ DR
Efc Efd Esc Esd Ewc Ewd EZ ER
OT (OT.Z) (OT.R)
OF (OF.Z) (OF.R)
This comes out to 44 types (polar climates are almost never going to satisfy the precip requirement for semi-arid or arid in practice).
It still leaves a system with arbitrary temperature thresholds, that don't align with either biomes, or air mass circulation.
Koppen and Trewarthas's temperature thresholds make sense in the context of observable natural phenomena.
Your system disregards that in exchange for a "feels like" kind of classification which says that a climate like Oslo, with an annual average high/low temperature of 3.2C/10.1C," feels like" a New Zealand climate, with a 10C/20C average annual high/low temperature- perhaps you can explain why they feel the same?
It still leaves a system with arbitrary temperature thresholds, that don't align with either biomes, or air mass circulation.
Koppen and Trewarthas's temperature thresholds make sense in the context of observable natural phenomena.
Your system disregards that in exchange for a "feels like" kind of classification which says that a climate like Oslo, with an annual average high/low temperature of 3.2C/10.1C," feels like" a New Zealand climate, with a 10C/20C average annual high/low temperature- perhaps you can explain why they feel the same?
In my system Auckland is pretty clearly subtropical while Wellington is transitional, since its coldest month is just under 10 C and almost all of its other months are over 10 C.
My main gripe with using the 8 month threshold for subtropical is it could include a lot of climates with winter averages at or possibly even slightly below freezing, which IMO defeats the purpose of having a truly subtropical climate category in the first place.
Besides, the average temperature thresholds for air mass circulation patterns may change in the future as the planet warms. Since we can’t predict how that might change, I think it’s more practical to assign climate categories based on thermal comfort and habitability/agricultural potential.
In my system Auckland is pretty clearly subtropical while Wellington is transitional, since its coldest month is just under 10 C and almost all of its other months are over 10 C.
My main gripe with using the 8 month threshold for subtropical is it could include a lot of climates with winter averages at or possibly even slightly below freezing, which IMO defeats the purpose of having a truly subtropical climate category in the first place.
Besides, the average temperature thresholds for air mass circulation patterns may change in the future as the planet warms. Since we can’t predict how that might change, I think it’s more practical to assign climate categories based on thermal comfort and habitability/agricultural potential.
What's Wellington transitional to? - some place that's 10C colder? Most climates are transitional.
Can you name any climates that have 8 months> 10C, with freezing winters? -That would mean going from freezing to 10C averages within 6 weeks, and I don't think any Trewartha C climate experiences that.
Your C climate doesn't consider thermal comfort and habitability/ agricultural potential - my climate supports citrus, avocado, olive industry etc, and that's not going to happen somewhere like Copenhagen. The coldest winter day ever recorded in my climate, is still warmer than the average day from November to March in Copenhagen -how can this be considered the same for thermal comfort and agricultural potential?
The main reason my system has so many subgroups is because my steppe and desert climates are divided by which temperature regime they fall into. So a tropical semi-arid climate would be AZ_, while a temperate arid climate would be CR_.
If i had to reduce the number of possible types, i would get rid of all temperature distinctions for tropical climates aside from “equatorial” and “non-equatorial”, and maybe also get rid of the third letter for dry climates. After making these changes, this is the number of base climate types:
Afe Afa Ame Ama Awe Awa Ase Asa AZ AR
Bfa Bfb Bsa Bsb Bwa Bwb BZ BR
Cfa Cfb Csa Csb Cwa Cwb CZ CR
Dfa Dfb Dsa Dsb Dwa Dwb DZ DR
Efc Efd Esc Esd Ewc Ewd EZ ER
OT (OT.Z) (OT.R)
OF (OF.Z) (OF.R)
This is how my reduced climate types would map to the "traditional" categories:
AR, BR = Hot arid
AZ, BZ = Hot semi-arid
CR, DR, ER = Cold arid
CZ, DZ, EZ = Cold semi-arid
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