A Comparison of Clustering Techniques for Meteorological Analysis

Abstract

Present work proposes the application of several clustering techniques (k-means, SOM k-means, k-medoids, and agglomerative hierarchical) to analyze the climatological conditions in different places. To do so, real-life data from data acquisition stations in Spain are analyzed, provided by AEMET (Spanish Meteorological Agency). Some of the main meteorological variables daily acquired by these stations are studied in order to analyse the variability of the environmental conditions in the selected places. Additionally, it is intended to characterize the stations according to their location, which could be applied for any other station. A comprehensive analysis of four different clustering techniques is performed, giving interesting results for a meteorological analysis.