The Dickinson Climate Classification: A Taxonomic Thermal–Hydrological Partition of Climate State Space

This record presents a formal climate classification framework introducing the Dickinson Climate Classification, a thermodynamically grounded system that partitions climate state space using invariant thermal and hydrological metrics. The framework is not a predictive climate model, attribution study, or impact assessment. Instead, it functions as a taxonomic and analytical tool for comparing climate regimes across paleoclimates, projected future warming scenarios, and hypothetical climatic states, as well as the present. Thermal categories are defined using evenly spaced cold-month and warm-month temperature intervals, while aridity is expressed through dimensionless P/PET ratios and seasonality diagnostics. This structure enables application at fine spatial scales wherever reliable climatological normals are available. This work is released as a preprint to establish a persistent, citable description of the classification system and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International License.