Evaluation of Climatic Similarity Between Areas in Biogeography

Eight areas in four European countries (Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia) were characterized by thirty-nine climatic variables. The data were standardized by transformation, and the mean Euclidean distance between each pair of areas was calculated. The matrix of distance values was then subjected to cluster analysis and the results were represented as a dendrogram of climatic relationships among the eight areas. This method is also applicable to a mesoclimatic comparison of localities, or to a more complex numerical comparison and classification of climates over a wide range of regions.