Climate Classification and the World's Climate Zones

To organize the enormous variety of climates found around the planet, climatologists rely on classification systems, the most widely used of which is the Köppen climate classification, developed by the German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen, first published around 1900 and subsequently revised by Köppen himself and later, most notably, by Rudolf Geiger. The system groups climates into broad categories, each assigned a capital letter, based primarily on patterns of temperature and precipitation, with the boundaries chosen to correlate closely with the natural vegetation typical of each zone. A second and sometimes third lowercase letter further refines each category, describing seasonal precipitation patterns and temperature characteristics, so that a full Köppen code, such as Cfb or BWh, conveys a fairly precise climatic profile in just a few symbols.