Defining climate zone of Borneo based on cluster analysis

Zulfaqar Sa’Adi,Mohammed Sanusi Shiru,Shamsuddin Shahid

doi:10.1007/s00704-021-03701-1

Abstract

Although Borneo Island is one of the most vulnerable tropical regions to climate change, maps depicting the local climate conditions employing climate classification are still not well defined. The present study attempted regional climate classification to divide the Borneo region into several homogenous groups based on long-term average climate behavior. Daily gridded rainfall and temperature (Tavg, Tmax, and Tmin) data at 0.25° resolution spanning 56 years (1960–2016) was used. The classification was done using non-hierarchical k-mean and several hierarchical methods, namely, Single, Complete, McQuitty, Average, Centroid, Median, and two algorithms of Ward’s method, wardD, and wardD2. The results showed that k-mean, wardD, and wardD2 were able to classify the climate of Borneo into four zones, namely ‘dry and hot’ (DH), ‘wet and hot’ (WH), ‘wet’ (W), and ‘wet and cold’ (WC) with a considerable difference at the boundaries. Spatial relevancy, stability, and variability of the clusters based on correlation and compromise programming showed that the wardD method was the most likely to yield acceptable results with optimum 4-cluster to partition the area into four principal climate zones. The constructed cluster plot, centroid plot, and probability distribution function (PDF) showed a distinct climatic characteristic between the climate zones in terms of rainfall, temperature, and seasonality. The proposed climate zonation for Borneo can help in better understanding climate regionality and climate-related development planning.

Highlights

Climate classification has two primary functions: identification, organization, and orderlyPrevious climate classification studies in Borneo were mostly based on political boundaries (Aldrian 2001; Hamada et al 2002; Aldrian and Dwi Susanto 2003), which is not suitable in many circumstances
The cluster solution showed that clustered group formation is optimal for the '4 clusters solution' with almost half of the group members forming at this solution
Our study showed that Borneo's monsoon influence is widespread and temporally varied depending on the climate zone

Summary

Introduction

Climate classification has two primary functions: identification, organization, and orderlyPrevious climate classification studies in Borneo were mostly based on political boundaries (Aldrian 2001; Hamada et al 2002; Aldrian and Dwi Susanto 2003), which is not suitable in many circumstances. The classifications involve the priori definition of a set of climate types or rules applied in climate classification (Fovell and Fovell 1993) In those studies, the climatic types were externally specified or indirectly suggested by the data instead of directly issuing them (Fovell and Fovell 1993). To reduce the subjectivity, Richman and Lamb (1985) propose a regionalization of climate by adopting variable manipulation strategies through principal component analysis (PCA). They found a pattern that emphasizes an anomaly that was relatively strong in different parts of the Central United States, yielding a regionalization of the rainfall-based domain

Methods

Results

Conclusion