New climatic zones in Iran: a comparative study of different empirical methods and clustering technique

Recently in agricultural and industrial sectors, researchers have started to classify the climate of a region using empirical methods clustering. This study aims compare four approaches classification (Thornthwaite Mather, De Martonne, Extended IRIMO (I.R. Iran Meteorological Organization)) with Ward’s hierarchical agglomerative clustering applied Iran. The dataset used this comprises maximum minimum temperatures precipitation data 356 weather stations extracted from IRIMO’s databases. Thirty-five synoptic are selected among stations. These regarding best uniform distribution, elevation, windward leeward sides mountain ranges, availability continuous 50-year (1966–2015). Compared other three reference classification, Thornthwaite Mather method emphasizes role water bodies air masses determining type region. Highlighting these two factors is identified as main advantage over three. most noticeable for highlands/mountainous regions, vicinity Zagros Mountains, western regions As case point, while Martonne methods, storm cell climatically classified similar patchy areas Caspian Sea coastal zone, correctly separate zone method. results also reveal that clusters obtained algorithm comparable those classifications, particularly