walterplot: Walter Diagram of Climate
In jarioksa/biogeo: Tools for Biogeography Lectures

Description Usage Arguments Details Author(s) References Examples

Function draws a simplified Walter diagram of monthly temperature and precipitation.

1	walterplot(temp, prec, title, south = FALSE, ylim, mrange, lwd = 3)

`temp`	Vector of twelve monthly temperature values.
`prec`	Vector of twelve monthly precipitation values.
`title`	Main title of the graph.
`south`	(logical): is the location in southern hemisphere?
`ylim`	limits of y-axis in temperature units. The graph will not be clipped, but the argument can be used to extend the axes.
`mrange`	Minimum range of y-axis in temperature units.
`lwd`	Line width of temperature and precipitation lines.

Walter diagram displays monthly temperature and precipitation together in the same graph with blue line for precipitation and red line for temperature. The diagram is scaled so that 10 degrees C corresponds to 20 mm precipitation. When precipitation line is above temperature, the period is regarded as humid and coloured skyblue in the diagram, and when precipitation line is below temperature, period is regarded as arid and coloured yellow. Dark blue us used when monthly precipitation exceeds 100 mm.

The function draws a simplified diagram intended to be used in general presentations and slides. For proper diagrams you need to find something else.

Jari Oksanen

Walter, H. (1985) Vegetation of the Earth and ecological systems of the geo-biosphere. 3rd ed. Springer.