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Old 06-29-2019, 09:10 PM
 
Location: Trewartha, Dc
110 posts, read 70,776 times
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Does anyone know how I can easily get information on Arthur Strahler's climate classification system? Any links, any thresholds, anything you can tell me at all? The only things I can find are snippets and a climate map through search engines.
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Old 07-01-2019, 04:07 AM
 
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Odd, I have never heard of that system until now that you brought it up. Would like to know about it as well.
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Old 07-01-2019, 02:02 PM
 
Location: Norman, OK
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It seems he wrote a book called Elements of Physical Geography; maybe it would be in there. But I can't find any papers by him about the subject in Google Scholar.
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Old 07-01-2019, 06:26 PM
 
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Strahler is like the Köppen system but geared towards climate genetics. The Af climate for example is subdivided into equatorial climate and those that receive trade winds. The desert climate is subdivided from that which is near the coast. The arid climates are different according to the thermal zone.
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Old 07-01-2019, 07:24 PM
 
Location: USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by srfoskey View Post
It seems he wrote a book called Elements of Physical Geography; maybe it would be in there. But I can't find any papers by him about the subject in Google Scholar.
Yes, I have that book (used in my first geography class in college). I don’t have a working scanner so I can’t produce a digital copy. But the 13 categories (each described separately with graphs for representative stations in each category) are:

Group I Low Latutude Climates
1. Wet equatorial climate
2. Monsoon and trade-wind littoral climate
3. Wet-dry tropical climate.
4. Dry tropical climate.

Group II Midlatitude Climates
5. Dry subtropical climate
6. Moist subtropical climate
7. Mediterranean climate
8. Marine west-coast climate
9. Dry midlatitude climate
10. Moist continental climate

Group III High Latitude Climates
11. Boreal forest climate
12. Tundra climate
13. Ice sheet climate

H - Undifferentiated Highland Climates

Climate subtypes:
s Semiarid (Steppe)
sd Semidesert (Steppe-desert transition)
d Desert
dw Desert, western littoral
sh Subhumid
h Humid
p Perhumid
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Old 07-01-2019, 08:22 PM
 
Location: Trewartha, Dc
110 posts, read 70,776 times
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Thank you! Thank you all. I had a feeling I would like Strahler from his delineation of a "trade-wind" tropics. Before I try to purchase it online, Xeric, can you give any definitions or thresholds for types 1 and 2, and any more detail on the letter subtypes?
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Old 07-01-2019, 10:38 PM
 
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@Xeric
How are types 2 and 3 in Group I different?
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Old 07-01-2019, 11:23 PM
 
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Caleb Yeung View Post
@Xeric
How are types 2 and 3 in Group I different?
2 is tropical monsoon and 3 is tropical savannah
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Old 07-01-2019, 11:48 PM
 
Location: USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FirebirdCamaro1220 View Post
2 is tropical monsoon and 3 is tropical savannah
That’s a good explanation. Category 2 has a short, relatively dry season of 2 to 3 months. The trade wind variant is not as wet as the monsoon variant. The examples are Belize for the former and Cochin for the latter. The category 3 example is Timbo Guinea - 163 cm (64 inches) annual precipitation, mostly from May through October; under 10 cm in March, April, and May; almost completely dry in Dec., Jan., Feb. So 6 months of the year are very dry and the other 6 months are quite wet.

Last edited by xeric; 07-02-2019 at 01:00 AM..
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Old 07-02-2019, 12:48 AM
 
Location: USA
1,546 posts, read 2,941,894 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Klimaforscher View Post
Thank you! Thank you all. I had a feeling I would like Strahler from his delineation of a "trade-wind" tropics. Before I try to purchase it online, Xeric, can you give any definitions or thresholds for types 1 and 2, and any more detail on the letter subtypes?
There aren’t really numeric thresholds per se. It’s more along the lines of the overall trend of the climate: how long the dry season is, whether there is a pronounced cool or cold season, seasonality of precipitation, etc. The classification is described in a chapter called “The Global Scope of Climate.” Then the following chapter discusses soil-water budgets for each of the categories in the earlier chapter. Examples are given for each climate and a soil-water budget is included for an average year (as a graph). Variables are water need, soil water surplus, precipitation, soil water deficit, water use. The climate classification is based on air masses and frontal zones (outlined in the earlier chapter) but also on these soil-water budgets. For example: a category 1 climate has no soil-water deficit through the year while a category 2 climate has several months of a small soil-water deficit.

This textbook is a treasure trove of information about the global atmospheric circulation, potential vegetation, land forms and soils, and a lot more. Each map extends across 2 pages (and this a large text book), and the cartography is impressive. I highly recommend it - in fact I originally sold it back to the university book store but regretted it later, and was able to find another geography student who wanted to sell his copy.

Last edited by xeric; 07-02-2019 at 01:03 AM..
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