What Is a Climate Map?

A climate map is a map that shows the climatic characteristics and the spatial and temporal distribution of climatic elements (such as temperature, precipitation, air pressure, wind, etc.). Commonly used climate maps can be divided into three types: plan, section, and single station maps. The floor plan is the most common and most common type of climate map, including ground plan, sea level view, contour map, and isobaric map. Most of the graphics are represented by contour lines, streamlines, arrows, colors, digital annotations, and symbols. The profile is the vertical distribution of climatic elements with contours, numbers, images, symbols, etc. on appropriate vertical and horizontal scale basemaps. The single station map is based on the average and extreme values of the climatic elements of a certain weather station. It uses rectangular coordinates, and is represented by straight lines, curves, polylines, contours, and progress lines. ^[1]

The compilation of climate maps needs to be based on a large amount of data. The preparation of climate maps for areas with sparse meteorological stations and complex distributions of terrain and vegetation must not simply rely on interpolation methods, but also take into account the impact of the underlying surface, and pay attention to the coordination of the distribution of climatic elements and local natural conditions. Climate maps are mostly published in the form of atlases, which are generally divided into comprehensive atlases and single-element atlases. The comprehensive atlas consists of atlases of different climatic elements. For example, the "Climate Atlas of the People's Republic of China" (1979) is divided into 10 map groups including solar radiation, sunshine, sea-level pressure and prevailing wind directions, temperature, humidity, precipitation, typhoons, clouds, weather phenomena, and climate divisions. A single-element atlas is composed of atlases of different aspects of a certain element. For example, the precipitation atlas can include maps of precipitation, precipitation variability, days of precipitation at various levels, frequency of precipitation at various levels, time of rainstorm start and end, rainstorm amount, and path. Through the atlas, we can comprehensively understand the temporal and spatial changes of climate elements and the relationship between climate elements. ^[3]