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Clustering current climate regions of Turkey by using a multivariate statistical method

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Abstract

In this study, the hierarchical clustering technique, called Ward method, was applied for grouping common features of air temperature series, precipitation total and relative humidity series of 244 stations in Turkey. Results of clustering exhibited the impact of physical geographical features of Turkey, such as topography, orography, land–sea distribution and the high Anatolian peninsula on the geographical variability. Based on the monthly series of nine climatological observations recorded for the period of 1970–2010, 12 and 14 clusters of climate zones are determined. However, from the comparative analyses, it is decided that 14 clusters represent the climate of Turkey more realistically. These clusters are named as (1) Dry Summer Subtropical Semihumid Coastal Aegean Region; (2) Dry-Subhumid Mid-Western Anatolia Region; (3 and 4) Dry Summer Subtropical Humid Coastal Mediterranean region [(3) West coast Mediterranean and (4) Eastern Mediterranean sub-regions]; (5) Semihumid Eastern Marmara Transition Sub-region; (6) Dry Summer Subtropical Semihumid/Semiarid Continental Mediterranean region; (7) Semihumid Cold Continental Eastern Anatolia region; (8) Dry-subhumid/Semiarid Continental Central Anatolia Region; (9 and 10) Mid-latitude Humid Temperate Coastal Black Sea Region [(9) West Coast Black Sea and (10) East Coast Black Sea sub-regions]; (11) Semihumid Western Marmara Transition Sub-region; (12) Semihumid Continental Central to Eastern Anatolia Sub-region; (13) Rainy Summer Semihumid Cold Continental Northeastern Anatolia Sub-region; and (14) Semihumid Continental Mediterranean to Eastern Anatolia Transition Sub-region. We believe that this study can be considered as a reference for the other climate-related researches of Turkey, and can be useful for the detection of Turkish climate regions, which are obtained by a long-term time course dataset having many meteorological variables.

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Acknowledgments

This study is supported by Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey, under contract number BAP-2008-01-09-02. The authors would like to express their gratitude to all members of the NINLIL research group, http://www.stat.metu.edu.tr/, for their contributions and would like to specially thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions which improved the quality of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering, Middle East Technical University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Cem Iyigun

  2. Physical Geography Division, Department of Geography, Onsekiz Mart University, 17020, Çanakkale, Turkey

    Murat Türkeş & Muhammed Z. Öztürk

  3. Department of Statistics, Middle East Technical University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    İnci Batmaz, Ceylan Yozgatligil, Vilda Purutçuoğlu & Elçin Kartal Koç

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  1. Cem Iyigun
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  4. Ceylan Yozgatligil
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  6. Elçin Kartal Koç
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Iyigun, C., Türkeş, M., Batmaz, İ. et al. Clustering current climate regions of Turkey by using a multivariate statistical method. Theor Appl Climatol 114, 95–106 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-012-0823-7

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