application of multivariate statistical methods in climatic regionalization case study: isfahan province

environmental management and planning and benefiting from climatic capacities of every geographical place are related to homogenous climatic regions and the most influential climatic elements in spatial separation of the climatic regions. accordingly, the aim of the present study includes determining the most influential climatic elements affecting on the climate of esfahan province, and the spatial separation of climatic subdivisions by using multivariate statistical methods. to do so, the mean annual data of 29 climatic elements from 17 synoptic stations were used in the limit of esfahan province. in the next step the maps of each variable were evaluated on a web-node with the pixel dimension of 12ã—12 km, with the help of kriging interpolation. finally, the correlated matrices of standardized data of the 29 climatic elements were analyzed in principal component analysis in 746 spatial pixels, in the province of esfahan. this analysis showed that with 9 principal components, more than 99 ùª of the spatial changes of the regional elements in the province can be described. at the same time, the temperature elements have the greatest roles and are more evident in the eastern half of the province. humidity elements have the second roles and are more evident in the western half of the province. the temperature and humidity elements determine 70 ùª of the spatial changes of climatic elements in the province. applying agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis, by the combination style applied on the scores of the 9 principal components, showed that the province can be classified into 10 climatic regions. this classification is matched a lot with the environmental realities of the province, especially the mountains configuration. the climatic regions of the western half of the province that have more a north west- south east trend, have great potentials for the regional civil planning and developments, while one of the biggest climatic potentials of the eastern half is its benefiting from the sunlight for energy production. at last, the studies revealed that the climatic conditions of esfahan station is a mean, sample one for the entire province.