Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification

The Köppen-Geiger is a system of global climate classification created by Wladimir Peter Köppen and subsequently updated and revised by Köppen in collaboration with Rudolf Geiger. It is the best-known and most widely used global climate classification available.

Köppen was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1846, and died 94 years later in Austria after making a prolific contribution to science. His early training in botany appears to have exerted considerable influence on the work for which he is best remembered—a global classification of climate. In an interesting twist of fate, his daughter married Alfred Wegener, the pioneer of continental drift, with whom Köppen collaborated on global paleoclimate reconstruction; this project presumably emphasized to him the importance of a global system of climate classification. In the ...