Application of the Köppen classification for climatic zoning in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract

The knowledge of the climatic conditions of a region is crucial for its agricultural development. It is also extremely important for understanding the fact that certain cultures have to develop under prevailing temperature and humidity conditions and assist in the adoption of a suitable irrigation technique, as well as its management and operationalization. The Köppen system of climate classification is widely used for the identification of homogeneous climate zones as it considers only rainfall and temperature as the meteorological elements for classification. For this study, we used climatic databases of rainfall and temperature in a raster format, with a spatial resolution of 30″ of arc (an approximate area of 0.86 km2 pixel-1), from 1961 to 1990. Through geoprocessing techniques, we obtained a map of climatic classification for the state of Minas Gerais. We found that the state has the following three major climatic groups: A, B and C, which correspond to tropical rainy, dry and warm temperate climates, respectively. The climate classes obtained were Aw, Am, BSh, Cwa and Cwb, with Aw, Cwa and Cwb classes occupying 99.89% of the territorial area of the state. The validation of the results showed a satisfactory agreement, with 93.75% reliability.