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Cannon 2005
Cannon, A.J. (2005). Defining climatological seasons using radially constrained clustering. Geophysical Research Letters 32: doi: 10.1029/2005GL023410. issn: 0094-8276.

A general method for defining seasons is developed that can be applied to any set of climatological variables. Radially constrained clustering is based on stratigraphically constrained clustering, which is a form of cluster analysis that imposes constraints on the temporal contiguity of the solutions. Time is represented cyclically rather than linearly and the climatological seasons are allowed to cross the calendar year boundary. To demonstrate, the method is applied to hydroclimatological data from British Columbia, Canada. The proposed clustering method is capable of separating the data into meaningful seasons. Trends in the start/end dates and lengths of the seasons are consistent with those identified in previous research.

BACKGROUND DATA FILES

Abstract

Keywords
Atmospheric Processes, Climatology (1616, 1620, 3305, 4215, 8408), Atmospheric Processes, Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513), Mathematical Geophysics, Persistence, memory, correlations, clustering (3265, 7857)
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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