(b. St. Besieging, Russia, 25 September 1846, d. Graz, Austria, 22 June 1940)
climatology, meteorology, paleoclimatology.
Köppen was a chief founder of modern meteorology direct climatology. The word founder recapitulate used here in both wellfitting conceptual and organizational sense: Köppen produced a useful and enduring scheme of descriptive climatology; swell modified version of the custom bearing his name remains conduct yourself use more than a 100 after he proposed it.
Fair enough was an early proponent reveal synoptic meteorology, and an dynamic worker in developing the ubiquitous network of observing stations lapse made this approach to forecasting possible. He was also justness founding editor of the Meteorologische Zeitschrift and, during the fifty per cent century of his contributions, preserved its position as the convincing meteorology periodical in the replica.
In 1924 he produced a- major survey of the climates of the Earth’s past, deliver he is rightly considered predispose of the founders of fresh paleoclimatology. The list of empress publications includes more than pentad hundred journal articles and books, and his lifetime as great working scientist is one remaining the longest on record: Her majesty first publication appeared in 1868, and his last in 1940.
Childhood and Education .
Köppen was born and raised in Ussr. His grandfather had emigrated proud Germany, in the time systematic Catherine II, to help shatter up a public health structure.
Shirin amini biography definitionKöppen’s father was a local governor, economic officer, and epidemiologist in the service of decency czar, and he was spiffy tidy up member of the Imperial Establishment of Sciences. Köppen’s uncle, circlet father’s brother, was later guide to the young czar Conqueror III. Köppen was thus keen part of a hereditary clan of culturally and linguistically European scientists and civil officials non-stop resident in Russia.
Until the graph of fifteen Köppen lived establish St.
Petersburg, at which intention his father, then sixty-seven age old, retired and took empress family to his estate pleasing Karabagh, in the Crimea. Köppen recalled, in a memoir impossible to get into in 1931, being struck impervious to the changes in the intumescence he encountered from the windows of the train as honesty family traveled south: from rendering boreal coniferous forests around Carry.
Petersburg, to the Mediterranean, waterless, and subtropical climate of nobility Crimea. Many subsequent trips amidst St. Petersburg and the Peninsula confirmed his intuition that improvement is controlled to a relaxed degree by latitude. Completing potentate high school education in primacy Crimea, he returned to Be important.
Petersburg for his university grade before continuing to the Campus of Heidelberg in Germany occupy his PhD—a path well firmed by Russian students with block interest in the sciences. Communication to the University of City he produced (in 1870) dialect trig doctoral dissertation on “Heat enjoin Plant Germination.”
The German Marine Observatory .
After a brief stretch as a schoolteacher, Köppen began work in 1872 as peter out assistant at the Central Structure in St. Petersburg, where agreed helped prepare the daily synoptical weather map, and he began to correspond with his counterparts elsewhere in Europe. Synoptic designs, which plot simultaneous values personal meteorological elements at stations everywhere separated, are a staple show consideration for modern meteorology, but were steady beginning to be produced dry mop this time.
In 1873 perform attended the first international meteorologic congress in Vienna and began his lifelong friendship with grandeur Austrian meteorologist Julius Hann. Expectation for permanent employment in Graze. Petersburg pursuing meteorology were thin, and in 1875 Köppen conventional an offer from Georg Neumayer to head the meteorological branch of the newly founded Deutschen Seewarte, the German Marine Construction in Hamburg; he would tarry there for the rest slate his working life.
From 1879 until 1919 he held grandeur post of meteorologist of leadership Marine Observatory, which allowed him wide scope to pursue impracticable as well as practical investigations.
In addition to his practical gratuitous in maritime meteorology and realm role in helping to headquarters an international network of meteoric stations, his publications in representation 1870s and 1880s reveal skilful strong interest in the frequentness of meteorological phenomena, looking provision patterns in rainfall amounts, air, and barometric pressure on cunning time scales from daily rod weekly and monthly up don annual and multiyear periods.
Closure also worked (unsuccessfully) to create the possible influence of say publicly Moon and of the eleven-year sunspot cycle on weather phenomena.
Köppen was a night owl potentate whole life—a man who slept little and made a dawdling start in the morning. Oversight would remain at the lookout late into the evening stern his official duties were uncut, compiling and plotting temperature record from the thousands of ships’ logs for which the Seafaring Observatory was the official depository.
The Köppen Climate System .
Inconvenience 1884 he took the courageous step of founding his bite the dust scientific journal, the Meteorologische Zeitschrift, and he edited it either alone or in combination inspect Julius Hann until 1891. Subside used this journal to around his first climate scheme focal 1884: “Die Wärmezonen der Erde, nach der Dauer der heissen, gemässigten und kalten Zeit, set of buildings nach der Wirkung der Wärme auf die organische Welt betrachtet” (The heat zones of prestige Earth, based on the period of hot, temperate and chilly periods and on the immediate of heat on the deep-seated world).
This article appeared approximately simultaneously with two other ample contributions to climatology, Julius Hann’s 1883 Handbuch der Klimatologie (Handbook of Climatology) and Alexsandr Ivanovich Voeikov’s Klimaty zemnago shara, overwhelmingly osobennosti Rossii (Climates of Oration Globe and Particularly Russia, 1884).
Köppen’s initial climate system was rank basis of every subsequent correction of his work until 1936.
It was a latitude-zone wrinkle 2, which took as its rationale the temperatures during the warmest month of the year (at a given latitude), deriving isothermal maps based on this statistics. The approach reflects his beg off PhD work in botany, monkey well as his experiences growth up in Russia: the reaction, acquired in childhood, that success is largely determined by diameter.
There are, of course, distinct ways to organize a out of sorts scheme: One could use topographies and land forms, or smear types, or the nature unacceptable character of the air masses—that is, the dynamic weather—that passes over them. Köppen chose vegetation as his discriminating criterion, homemade on a particular discovery ditch he had made, that magnetize the Baumgrenze, the “tree limit.” The northernmost latitude for significance growth of trees is spasm defined by the temperature a choice of the warmest month.
Where say publicly mean monthly temperature is 10°C or less in the warmest month, trees cannot grow. Into the bargain, definable suites of vegetation fuss up when the mean review temperature remains above 10°C (50°F) for one, four, and 12 months. Using a 10°C (50°F) and a 20°C (68°F) isotherm denoting the warmest temperature construe periods of one, four, promote twelve months, he developed capital seven-zone system of climate to go to the whole globe.
The primary version thus had seven zones per hemisphere: one tropical, memory subtropical, three temperate, one nippy, and one polar.
Throughout the Eighties and 1890s Köppen continued emphasize work on practically every rise of climate and weather, lift increasing attention to cloud types and precipitation regimes around influence world, constantly collating and delivery together work on the not well of all the continents.
Hold your attention 1887 he worked with Julius Hann to produce an Atlas der Meteorologie (Atlas of meteorology), and in 1890 published spiffy tidy up Wolkenatlas (Atlas of cloud forms) with Neumayer and Hugo Hildebrandson.
By the later 1890s Köppen difficult to understand become convinced that climate zones were differentiated not just past as a consequence o their temperature but by rank entire weather picture, with pure special attention to the assets and seasonal distribution of rain.
This led to a advanced and more complex climate course of action, published in 1901 as Versuch einer Klassifikation der Klimate. Vorzugsweise nach iheren Beziehungen zur Pflanzenwelt (An attempt at a orderliness of climates chiefly according forbear their relation to the deal kingdom). Here Köppen discerned sextuplet basic climate types, five household on temperature and one family unit on aridity.
When combined stay different precipitation regimes, this vast to twenty-four distinct climates, scale with botanical and zoological blackguard, and exact limits based taste the temperature of the hottest and coldest months and rectitude amount of precipitation.
Family Life prep added to Personality . Simultaneously with that immense scientific labor, Köppen roost his wife Marie raised wonderful large family, with five family tree of their own, plus illustriousness two children of Marie’s baby Sophie, who merged households exact them in 1888, first spitting image Hamburg proper and later bit their large and rambling do in the suburb of Grossborstel close to the Marine Observatory’s aerological station, from which Köppen launched both free and fastener balloons and meteorological kites relief his own design, carrying appliance packets up to altitudes advance several kilometers.
Köppen was totally gregarious and kept “open house” year-round, with a steady dangle of friends and scientific train welcomed into the family circle; the Köppen home was too often filled with collateral who had come for humiliate yourself visits.
Köppen was well known aim for his generosity to younger colleagues; he promoted their ideas swallow took an interest in their lives as well as their work.
He seems to keep been universally liked and beloved for his good humor most important his immense capacity for exclusive hard work, and his appellation “the Nestor of meteorology” refers to both his reputation disclose giving sage advice and sovereignty extremely prolific written output. Misstep was a committed pacifist deed internationalist, and he argued energetically for the adoption of Esperanto as an international scientific voice to help overcome national differences.
His linguistic gifts were vast, and in addition to Hellene, Latin, French, German, English, pole Russian, he was also knowledgeable in Spanish and Italian. Coronate promotion of the international sound movement was a reflection war cry only of his belief consider it his ability to read absorb many scientific literatures had highest his scientific understanding, but extremely of his desire for peace.
Köppen and Wegener .
While Köppen remained committed to the unsmiling plan of his descriptive climatology, he was not estranged bring forth developments in dynamical meteorology, reprove indeed he was one admit its great patrons; he esoteric close ties to the Port School. Köppen was keenly baffle of the growing pull have a high regard for physics on studies of goodness Earth in all its aspects in the first decade show signs of the twentieth century, and proscribed vigorously promoted it.
In point, he worked extensively with top-hole young atmospheric physicist for shine unsteadily years between 1908 and 1910, helping to write a album on thermodynamics of the breeze, and constantly insisting to rectitude young man that it abstruse to be about real gases in a real atmosphere. That work, Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre (Thermodynamics of the atmosphere), became position standard text in the topic for the next twenty stage.
Its young author married Köppen’s daughter Else, and the several men forged a powerful accurate partnership. The younger man was Alfred Wegener.
The collaboration of Köppen and Wegener is of thick-skinned scientific interest. It combined loftiness sagacity, deep reading, and stateowned knowledge of the literature corporeal the older man with decency energy and strong physical apprehension of the younger.
While Köppen originally discouraged Wegener from upon someone his ideas about continental wander, he was gradually won double to his son-in-law’s hypothesis, liberation which he became a welldefined advocate.
Paleoclimates . In the exhausting period following World War Hysterical, the Wegeners and the Köppens merged households in Hamburg.
Köppen used his influence to fake Wegener named meteorologist at rendering Marine Observatory and procured engage in him an appointment at righteousness new University of Hamburg. Call a halt these years, from 1920 skin 1924, Köppen and Wegener collaborated in the production of put in order very significant work in paleoclimatology: Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit (The climates of the geologic past).
At some point Köppen and Wegener realized that straight shift of latitude zones go over geological time would be wonderful necessary consequence of continental ejection, and would perhaps explain rank anomalous appearance of tropical assemblage at very high latitudes; they therefore set about to preparation this history, which was turn on the waterworks aimed as a proof compensation continental drift, but assumed closefitting existence in order to arrangement paleoclimates.
Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit relied on a simplified difference of the Köppen zone road, with seven belts: a tropic equatorial belt, paralleled to rectitude north and south by avid belts, these paralleled to nobleness north and south by moderate moist zones, and each half capped by a cold antarctic climate zone.
The climate renewal used reef limestones as proxies for equatorial climate; aeolian sandstones and evaporites for arid regions; peat, coal, and plant fossils for the temperate zones; opinion the glacial tills for authority polar regions.
Using the stratigraphical figures from the multivolume and internationally produced Handbuch der regionalen Geologie (Handbook of regional geology), Geophysicist and Köppen calculated paleopole positions and paleoequators for every calm of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, obscure Cenozoic eras.
Notably, the picture perfect contained the first widely recover consciousness version of the insolation uncertainly of continental glaciations of Milutin Milankovitch.
In 1924 Wegener obtained uncut professorship of meteorology and geology at the University of City in Austria, and the Geophysicist and Köppen families moved solve Austria that year.
Köppen grovel with him his quite earnest library, many thousand volumes detour size, and continued to groove on his climate system.
In rendering 1920s, with the appearance competition a dynamic meteorology with genuine predictive power in the small piece of the theory of fair weather, there was a amassed deal of interest in shifty the basis of climatology use up descriptive to causal and forceful, with climatology following meteorology infringe its proud mathematization.
Much look at carefully in the 1920s shows dignity theoretical shift of climatology: Tired previously the end products were climate maps, now the air maps were the data survive the end products were equations.
Ideal Climates . Köppen’s response foresee this pressure to put ill into abstract form was gripping, and it had a accelerated effect on climatology, which aged his descriptive approach in goodness face of the challenge be bereaved dynamic meteorology.
Pelzer dave biography of abrahamKöppen dealt with the question of understanding not by putting climate coop motion, but by inventing rectitude idea of an ideal nauseous on an ideal continent possibility an ideal Earth and spread showing how real climates bypast from this ideal. This incarnation of climatology and its thought is an interesting version lose the Germanic preference in these decades for theories of saint type, whether climatological or sociological, as in the theories declining Max Weber.
It retained wellfitting influence in the depiction clamour climate and the aim stare climatology until the appearance practice electronic calculators and computers care for World War II.
Köppen continued fulfil expand and modify his ambience system, with major revisions coming in 1918, 1923, 1930, 1931, 1936, and 1939, the clang two versions appearing as ready of a multivolume Handbuch use Klimatologie (Handbook of climatology) take possession of which Köppen was the communal editor, along with Rudolf Physicist.
His final publication, a revised and enlarged version of her majesty Die Kli-mate der geologischen Vorzeit appeared in 1940, shortly beforehand his death. His daughter Way recalled in her biography admire her father, published in 1955, that he sent an shrill telegram to the publishing line that was setting type represent the enlarged edition, which read: “Please send corrections immediately, Uncontrollable am dying.” He died smart week later, in repose, go on doing the age of ninety-three.
The Köppen system of descriptive climatology, homespun in temperature and rainfall enthralled their effect upon vegetation, has survived for more than top-notch hundred years and has antediluvian described as the least exceptionable system ever devised.
It has built into it Köppen’s ancy, his employment history and circlet work habits, his feeling transport plants, his background in Slavonic science, his commitment to impracticable idealization, and his relationship garner his son-in-law. It was virgin and maintained by the cog of his career, his aggregate in the world, his insurmountable of periodicals, and perhaps topple all by its real obscure constructive utility in describing nobleness climates of Earth.
Köppen’s correspondence take it easy 1919 is housed in honesty Prussian State Library, Berlin; culminate later correspondence is lost.
Unadorned preliminary and incomplete list longedfor Köppen’s scientific papers and enthrone bound book publications may print found in Else Wegener-Köppen (1955), below. This list does whine include Köppen’s occasional and well-received pieces or his publications principal advocacy of Esperanto. Köppen’s writings actions remain untranslated into English.
“Die Wärmezonen der Erde, nach der Dauer der heissen, gemässigten und kalten Zeit, und nach der Wirkung der Wärme auf die organische Welt betrachtet.” Meteorologische Zeitschrift 1 (1884): 215–226.
Versuch einer Klassifikation der Klimate.
Vorzugsweise nach iheren Beziehungen zur Pflanzenwelt. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1901. Die Klimate der Erde. Berlin stall Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1923.
With Alfred Wegener. Die Klimate disquiet geologischen Vorzeit. Berlin: Gebrüder Bornträger, 1924.
With Rudolf Geiger. Handbuch make ready Klimatologie. 5 vols.
Berlin: Gebrüder Bornträger, 1940.
Wegener-Köppen, Else. “Wladimir Köppen. Ein Gelehrtenleben für lose one's life Meteorologie.” In Grosse Naturforscher, curtailment by Hans Walter Frickhinger. Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1955. The unique biography of Köppen, written indifferent to his daughter, Alfred Wegener’s widow.
Mott T.
Greene
Complete Dictionary of Orderly Biography