Evaluate Turkey’s Climate Classification by Clustering Analysis Method

Abstract

Climate change, which has become one of the most important issues of our time, is spoken and evaluated in many environments. It is a fact that this issue, which is also discussed outside the scientific fields, is not known enough by the society. Evaluation linking climate change to human impact is one of the most important evidence of this lack of information. Those who work in climate studies, especially geographers, know that climate change has anthropogenic causes as well as natural causes. Another issue here is what is changing. So, what is the climate feature and how can we show that there is a change in these features. In this respect, climate types and climate classifications are some important issues. General climate characters can be classified by some methods. Accordingly, climate-related researchers can make evaluations for a country or region based on these classifications. However, climate is a dynamic phenomenon. Consequently, classical climate classification methods now require an update. Although different studies have been carried out on climate classification, we aim to bring a different perspective to the classical climate classification by cluster analysis. Turkey, due to its special location, is a country with many different climate types. The most important reason for having different climate classes is the mathematical location, the effects of air masses and fronts, and a special topography. Classification of Turkey’s climate has been under many studies since the 1900 s. In particular, these studies contributed significantly to the scientific sense since the 1950 s.