Self-organizing maps provide a powerful, non-linear technique of dimensionality reduction that can be used to identify clusters with similar attributes. Here, they were constructed from a 1000-year-long gridded palaeoclimatic dataset, namely the Old World Drought Atlas, to detect regions of homogeneous hydroclimatic variability across the European continent. A classification scheme of 10 regions was found to describe most efficiently the spatial properties of Europe’s hydroclimate. These regions were mainly divided into a northern and a southern subset, linked together with a northwest-to-southeast orientation. Further analysis of the classification scheme with complex networks confirmed the divergence between the northern and southern components of European hydroclimate, also revealing that is not strongly correlated to the Iberian Peninsula. On the contrary, the region covering the British Isles, France and Germany appeared to be linked to both branches, implying links of hydroclimate with atmospheric/oceanic circulation.

中文翻译：

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用自组织地图表示欧洲水文气候模式

自组织映射提供了一种强大的非线性降维技术，可用于识别具有相似属性的集群。在这里，它们是根据一个长达 1000 年的网格古气候数据集构建的，即旧世界干旱图集，以检测整个欧洲大陆的同质水文气候变化区域。发现 10 个区域的分类方案最有效地描述了欧洲水文气候的空间特性。这些区域主要分为北部和南部子集，以西北到东南方向连接在一起。对复杂网络的分类方案的进一步分析证实了欧洲水文气候的北部和南部成分之间的差异，也表明这与伊比利亚半岛没有很强的相关性。