Wladimir Koppen

Wladimir Koppen was a Russian-German geographer, meteorologist, climatologist and botanist who developed the climate classification system that bears his name and remains widely used today. Koppen published the first version of his map of world climate zones, based on plotted seasonal temperature ranges, in 1884; a fuller version of his classification system followed in 1918, and after further revisions a final version was published in 1936. The Koppen system divides the world's climates into major groups, including tropical, dry, warm temperate, snowy or cold, and polar climates, defined according to their correspondence with characteristic natural vegetation patterns. Koppen also coined the term aerology to describe the scientific study of the upper atmosphere, and his climate classification work built on and helped organize decades of accumulated meteorological observation into a coherent global system.