Social Sciences and History / Unit 10 SSH 0938 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Köppen: Classifying a Climate by Temperature, Rain, and Season
The idea
The exam gives a climate's traits or letter and asks its group, and Dastrup's Köppen classification, based on temperature, amount of precipitation and its timing, with vegetation as the indicator, sorts five groups and one addition. A, tropical: every month averages eighteen degrees Celsius or more, abundant rain, within roughly fifteen to twenty-five degrees of the equator. B, dry: evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation, a moisture deficit, deserts and steppes. C, temperate: the transition between tropical and polar, mild winters, warm summers, plentiful rain. D, continental: Northern Hemisphere only, forty to seventy degrees north, far from large water, four seasons and wide ranges. E, polar: warmest month below ten degrees, bitter winters, dry. H, highland: altitude mimics latitude, added after Köppen. A climate and its plants and animals make a biome.
In practice
Given "no month below eighteen degrees, rain year-round", A. Given "more evaporation than rain", B. Given "hot summers, frigid winters, deep inside a large continent", D. Given "the warmest month barely reaches ten degrees, tundra at the treeline", E. Given "mild wet winters, warm summers", C. Ask temperature first, then whether rain exceeds evaporation, then seasonality.
Where people slip
The trap is D in the Southern Hemisphere; the anchor says no landmass there is broad enough. The second trap is B by temperature; dry is defined by the moisture deficit, hot or cold.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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