Wladimir Köppen: biography of this geographer and climatologist.

Summary of the life of Wladimir Köppen, whose climate classification system was very influential.

Wladimir Köppen was one of the most important geographers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although his studies were initially directed towards botany, over time he became increasingly interested in the climate of both modern times and the past.

Of Russian origin but with German lineage, Köppen has been a reference both in Germany, Russia and the rest of the world concerning geography, meteorology and climatology, being very famous his classification system of the Earth's climates, in force today with some modification.

Let's take a look at the life and contributions of this scientist, where his interest in plants and climates came from and what are his main works, by means of a biography of Wladimir Köppen.

Brief biography of Wladimir Köppen.

Wladimir Köppen was a German-born Russian geographer, meteorologist, climatologist and botanist.. He came from a lineage of illustrious people, since his grandfather was a great physician, who came to serve the Russian monarchy in the time of the tsars, and his father was a great anthropologist and geographer. His grandfather's interest in the natural sciences and his father's interest in the social sciences meant that Wladimir Köppen ended up taking a bit of both, becoming interested in botany and geography.

Early years

Wladimir Petróvich Köppen was born on October 8 (Gregorian calendar)/September 25 (Julian calendar), 1846 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire.Russian Empire. His grandfather was one of the many German doctors invited by Empress Catherine II to improve the country's health care and became the Tsar's personal physician. His father, Peter von Köppen (1793-1864) was a noted geographer, historian and ethnographer of Russian ancestral cultures who worked at the St. Petersburg Academy.

Köppen's father fostered intellectual contacts between Russian scientists and Slavists (experts on Slavic cultures) from Western countries. In gratitude for Peter von Köppen's services, Tsar Alexander II (1818-1881) of Russia made him an academician and granted him an estate on the southern coast of Crimea, a place that would be very important during Wladimir's childhood.

Crimea was a place very rich in flora and fauna, a nature that aroused the interest of the young Wladimir Köppen and made him start his first botanical explorations.. The richness of the place made him start looking for the explanation of how the temperature influenced the varieties of plants in a certain place. He would carry out these explorations in his free time, after finishing his classes at the secondary school in Simferopol, in the Crimean peninsula.

Academic training

After attending high school in Crimea, Wladimir Köppen enrolled in botany at the University of St. Petersburg, where he began his studies in 1864.. He would not stay there forever, as in 1867 he would be transferred to the University of Heidelberg. Later, in 1870, he would attend the University of Leipzig, where he would defend his doctoral thesis on the effects of temperature on plant growth.

In the course of the Franco-Prussian war Wladimir Köppen served in the medical ambulance corps, experience which helped him to work later in his hometown at the Central Medical Observatory in St. Petersburg. Without leaving Russia, between 1872 and 1873 Wladimir Köppen would work in the Russian Meteorological Service.

Meteorological forecasting service

However, he would later return to Germany, moving to Hamburg in 1875 to head the division of atmospheric telegraphy and marine meteorology at the German Maritime Observatory (Deutsche Seewarte). Köppen's task at that institution was to be in charge of the weather to be in charge of the weather forecasting service for northwest Germany and neighboring countries..

His systematic study of the weather was innovative and original for the time, since he used balloons to obtain data from the upper layers of the atmosphere. Thus, thanks to his system, in 1884 he published the first version of his map of climatic zones, tracing the temperature belts of the world according to the average monthly temperature.

In 1900 he introduced his mathematical system of climate classification, based on the amount of precipitation and temperature in different parts of the world. The complete version of this system was published in 1918 and, after subsequent modifications, the final and definitive version was published in 1936.

Final years

In 1919 he retired from his position at the Hamburg Observatory and in 1924 he decided to move to Graz, Austria, where he would spend the rest of his life. In 1930 he co-edited a five-volume work on climatology called "Handbuch der Klimatologie" ("Handbook of Climatology"), with the help of the German meteorologist Rudolph Geiger. This work was never completed, since Köppen only managed to publish three of the five volumes planned.

Wladimir Petróvich Köppen died on June 22, 1940 at the age of 93 in the city of Graz, then Austria under the Nazi regime.at that time Austria under the Nazi regime. After his death in 1940, his colleague Geiger continued the work on modifications to the climate classification system.

Life and personal interests

During his lifetime, Köppen was a prolific scientist who produced more than 500 scientific papers which demonstrate his great interest and curiosity for science, especially climatology, of which he was so expert. He was also interested in social issues, such as land use, educational reforms and improving the nutrition of the poor. He was an advocate of peace and Esperantist, advocating the use of Esperanto.He was able to speak the auxiliary language and, in fact, he made several publications in it.

But he not only devoted himself to describing the climates of the time, but also investigated what they must have been like in more ancient times. He was a pioneer of the science of paleoclimatology and tried to expound his knowledge and theories in a scientific paper published in 1924, called "Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit" (The Climates of the Geologic Past), together with his son-in-law Alfred Wegener, a German scientist who would become known for his theory of continental drift. This text gave support to the theory of ice ages proposed by Serbian geophysicist Milutin Milanković.

Classification of the Earth's climates.

As we have commented, the greatest merit of Wladimir Köppen among the many he had was his classification of the Earth's climates. Although he had already made his first sketches and publications on this issue throughout the 19th century, in 1918 he revised his first climatic scheme, originally published in 1900, and continued to improve it during the last years of his life.

By the time of his death in 1940, his proposal had become widely popular, being used by geographers and climatologists alike, especially the aforementioned Trewar, who had already published it in 1918.especially the aforementioned Trewartha. They were adapting and improving this classification, arriving at the current model.

Today the classification of the Earth's climates is indispensable to understand how nature is distributed and adapted according to climate and precipitation. It is an empirical classification, which groups climates based on the effects they have on a climate-dependent element or phenomenon, Köppen's proposal being originally very focused on natural vegetation.

In the original classification, Köppen combined precipitation and temperatures taking into account fixed annual and monthly values, without taking into account causes.without taking into account the causes. Based on the majority vegetation of a given region, temperatures and rainfall that area was grouped into one or another climatological group. To each climate he assigned a letter, being originally five the great climatological types proposed by Wladimir Köppen:

• A: tropical rainy climates
• B: dry climates
• C: temperate and humid climates
• D: boreal climates or snow and forest climates
• E: polar or snow climates

After subsequent revisions by Köppen himself and other scientists, the letters F (equatorial climate) and H (alpine climate) were added. All these climates are defined by temperature criteria and the type of vegetation present., with the exception of climate B in which only precipitation is taken into account.

Bibliographical references:

• Wille, Robert-Jan Wille (2017): Colonizing the Free Atmosphere: Wladimir Köppen’s ‘Aerology’, the German Maritime Observatory, and the Emergence of a Trans-Imperial Network of Weather Balloons and Kites, 1873-1906
• Alby, Michael (3002). Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate. New York: Facts On File, Inc. ISBN 0-8160-4071-0 (inglés).
• Else Wegener-Köppen, Jörn Thiede (2018): Wladimir Köppen: Scholar for Life (Ein Gelehrtenleben für die Meteorologie), Borntraeger Science Publishers ISBN 978-3-443-01100-0, 316p.