COPLOT Display Technique as an Aid to Climatic Classification

COPLOT, a new graphic display method for multivariate data analysis, is introduced and used to divide a geographical region into climatic subregions. This method, a variant of the BIPLOT technique, is applied here to study similarity among climatic stations, the correlation structure among climatic variables, and the mutual relationships between station observations and climatic variables. At this stage, this technique is used as a supplement to cluster analysis in the attempt to understand the covariance structure of the climatic data set. However, in the future, the final decision on area grouping will be based exclusively on visual inspection of the COPLOT output display. 1993 The Ohio State University