The climate between different places can vary enormously. Wladmir Koppen has come up with one of the most famous climate systems. He proposed five main climates.

He started at the equator. Here the sun has a high angle and is therefore high at the sky. This makes it very warm around the equator. In one of the other explanations you have already learned that there is is often a low-pressure area around the equator. Because of the low-pressure area it often rains. At and near the equator we find the climates that are warm and wet. Koppen gave these climates the letter A. These are climates where the average temperature per month never gets lower than 18 degrees and there is significant precipitation. Another name for these climates is tropical climates.
Further away from the equator we encounter deserts. Here it’s still warm, but unlike the climates around the equator very dry. As you have learned in one of the previous explanations, this has to do with the high pressure area around these places. Koppen gave these climates the letter B. These are areas with a maximum precipitation of 400 mm per year. These are therefore the dry or arid climates.


Further away from the equator it gets colder. Here we find the C-climates. In C-climates, the average temperature of the coldest month is lower than 18 degrees. Otherwise it is an A climate! But, in the coldest month, the average temperature is always warmer than 3 degrees below zero. It is therefore useful to look at the coldest months in this case, because then you quickly can see that it is a C climate. C-climates are influenced by the sea. C-climates are therefore also called maritime climates. The influence of the sea is reflected in the temperature; In the summer it almost never gets very hot. That is because the sea water, so far from the equator, is cooler in the summer than the country. Seawater does not heat up that quickly. The cooler sea air ensures that the country does not really heat up and in the summer it does not get very hot. In the winter the sea is warmer than the country. The seawater cools down only slowly, so that there is often less cold air coming from the sea. This ensures that the winters at C-climates are not too cold and on average are not colder than 3 degrees below zero.


Inland we find the D-climates. The effect of the sea is lacking here and that is why we call it continental climates. This means that the summers are hotter than C-climates, because there is no cooling air. Because in the cold winters no warmer sea air reaches these places, the winters also become very cold. That is why we distinguish the D-climates by setting an average temperature of no more than 3 degrees below zero for the coldest month.

When It’s also cold in the summer, then we are dealing with E-climates. These are climates that occur near the North and South Pole and therefore we call them polar climates. The limit in these climates is in the hottest month: It can be up to 10 degrees on average. Is it warmer in the hottest month, then it is a D climate.

Although the 5 different climates are a good layout, it is not very specific yet. The area where a certain climate is present is very large and there are usually large differences in such areas. That is why Wladmir Köppen has divided the climates into various subclimates. Within an E-climate, for example, there is a distinction between an EF climate, where the average temperature never exceeds 0 degrees and ET climates, where the average temperature in the summer is between 0 and 10 degrees. In areas with an EF climate it therefore always freezes and the bottom is covered with snow. Nothing grows here. With an ET climate the soil thaws in the summer, this is the Tundra. No trees grow here.

At the B-climates there is a distinction between the BS climates where there is still a bit of precipitation and the BW climates where there is almost no precipitation. BS climates are the semi-arid areas, where there is on average between 200 and 400 mm of precipitation per year. BW climates are the deserts where less than 200 mm of precipitation falls per year. No trees grow in both the BS and the BW climate

Within the A, C and D climates a distinction is made based on the season in which there is hardly any precipitation. A small letter f, w or s is added to these climates. The f stands for the failure of a drought season. Because the drought season fails, or is absent, the precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the year. In North-Western Europe there is a Cf climate; there is a C climate and the precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the year. At places around the equator there is often Af climate. It is tropical and it rains all year round.

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