Climate is inherently geographical. Climatic processes vary across space and time and interact with topography, land cover, water bodies, ecosystems, urban environments and human societies. Geographical climatology provides an integrative framework for understanding these interactions and for bridging atmospheric processes with their spatial expression and environmental and societal consequences.
This session invites contributions addressing the geographical dimensions of climate variability and change across a broad range of spatial and temporal scales.
We particularly welcome studies dealing with:
• synoptic, regional and local climatology;
• spatial and temporal variability of temperature, precipitation and other climatic variables;
• heat waves, droughts, floods, storms, cold spells and other climatic extremes;
• urban climatology, urban heat islands and thermal environments;
• topoclimatology and microclimatology;
• land–atmosphere and ocean–atmosphere interactions;
• climate variability and long-term climatic trends;
• geographical patterns and regional manifestations of climate change;
• climate hazards, vulnerability and risk;
• interactions between climate, landscapes, ecosystems and human societies;
• climate-related impacts on health, agriculture, water resources and urban environments;
• adaptation to climate change at local and regional scales;
• remote sensing and GIS applications in climatology;
• spatial climatological databases, reanalysis products and observational networks;
• statistical, geospatial and modelling approaches to geographical climatology.
The session particularly encourages research that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries and demonstrates how geographical approaches can contribute to understanding climate processes and their environmental and societal impacts.
Contributions integrating observations, remote sensing, reanalysis data, climate modelling and spatial analysis are welcome, as are comparative studies from different climatic regions of the world.
The session aims to strengthen interaction between climatology and the broader geographical and geoscientific communities and to highlight the continuing importance of geographical perspectives for understanding climate variability, extremes and climate change.