Help with climates

[bradrn]

I’ve made a world, and I’m trying to figure out the climates with this excellent guide. Images of the world and its climates can be found at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3x0165ctwvo0 ... 15fca?dl=0. The brown lines are supposed to be mountains (this is still a fairly rough map), and the climates are indicated via boundary lines with their Köppen symbols.

I have two main questions:

• Does what I have already done look correct?
• I’m stuck in the areas where no climate is marked yet — what climates should go there?

(Assume that the world has about the same size, axial inclination etc. as Earth.)

[Ares Land]

Oh, I'd missed your post!

I'm not an expert on that by any means, but I'll do what I can.

On your smallish continent on the center of the map, you should have I think desert south of your mediterranean zone, and then semi-arid climate.

Cfb/Cfc should transition to Dfb/Dfc as you go east on your large Western continent (think Western Europe to Poland to Russia).
I suppose you'd have an oceanic temperate zone on the northern coast of the central/western continent, up to the temperate zone, and desert south of that.

The south part of your Northern continent should be west coast temperate (with perhaps a small Mediterranean part) then subarctic.
On the southern continent, Mediterannean climate should transition to oceanic temperate, and likewise you should have Dfb/Dfc on the East side

I find it helps to draw the equator and the 30th, 45th and 60th parallels. These map more or less to the climate zones; for instance the Mediterranean zone is between 30° to 45° north (or south); the warm desert zone from 15° to 30°.

[bradrn]

Thanks for replying Ars Lande! Your advice looks really helpful, but I’m struggling to figure out which continent each of your ad hoc descriptions refer to though, so could you tell me if this is correct?

‘smallish continent on the center of the map’ — the one east of the island arc joining two continents
‘large Western continent’ — not sure, possibly the one with the big N-S mountain chain?
‘central/western continent’ — no idea what this refers to
‘Northern continent’ — the continent at the very north, looks squished due to the projection
‘southern continent’ — the continent around the South Pole, has a big promontory north

I find it helps to draw the equator and the 30th, 45th and 60th parallels. These map more or less to the climate zones; for instance the Mediterranean zone is between 30° to 45° north (or south); the warm desert zone from 15° to 30°.

I forgot to mention it, but the equator is actually marked: there’s a very pale Ɛ drawn at the right-hand side of the map at the equator. I haven’t marked the other parallels though.

[Ares Land]

Thanks for replying Ars Lande! Your advice looks really helpful, but I’m struggling to figure out which continent each of your ad hoc descriptions refer to though, so could you tell me if this is correct?

‘smallish continent on the center of the map’ — the one east of the island arc joining two continents

Yes

‘large Western continent’ — not sure, possibly the one with the big N-S mountain chain?

The one that is joined by an isthmus to the previous one. (The one that looks like Australia)

‘central/western continent’ — no idea what this refers to

The previous two continents (the ones joined by an isthmus)

‘Northern continent’ — the continent at the very north, looks squished due to the projection
‘southern continent’ — the continent around the South Pole, has a big promontory north

Yep.

[Nila_MadhaVa]

this excellent guide

Thanks for the link. I've been putting off redoing the climates for my conworld (originally done like a decade ago and it was entirely arbitrary re placement) and that guide has been very helpful. One thing about precipitation confuses me though: various factors are given for whether an area gets high or low amounts, but what happens when factors clash, e.g. onshore winds in the STHZ or with cold coastal currents?

[bradrn]

this excellent guide

Thanks for the link. I've been putting off redoing the climates for my conworld (originally done like a decade ago and it was entirely arbitrary re placement) and that guide has been very helpful. One thing about precipitation confuses me though: various factors are given for whether an area gets high or low amounts, but what happens when factors clash, e.g. onshore winds in the STHZ or with cold coastal currents?

Presumably it would have a medium amount of precipitation, but I don’t really know. I think this is the biggest problem with that guide: the table at the end requires you to know precipitation on a scale of very wet/wet/moderate/low/very low/dry, and temperature on a scale of very hot/hot/warm/mild/cool/cold/very cold, but the guide doesn’t actually give enough detail to be able to find these parameters at this granularity!

[Nila_MadhaVa]

Presumably it would have a medium amount of precipitation, but I don’t really know. I think this is the biggest problem with that guide: the table at the end requires you to know precipitation on a scale of very wet/wet/moderate/low/very low/dry, and temperature on a scale of very hot/hot/warm/mild/cool/cold/very cold, but the guide doesn’t actually give enough detail to be able to find these parameters at this granularity!

Damn, I hadn't gotten to the temperature section yet.

I've been thinking about precipitation though, and I came up with this; there are 7 factors each for high and low precipitation. If each high factor is scored as +1 and each low factor at -1, then for a particular area we could say

very wet = 5, 6, 7
wet = 3, 4
moderate = 1, 2
low = 0, -1
very low = -2, -3, -4
dry = -5, -6, -7

Thats the best I could come up with. What do you think?

[bradrn]

Presumably it would have a medium amount of precipitation, but I don’t really know. I think this is the biggest problem with that guide: the table at the end requires you to know precipitation on a scale of very wet/wet/moderate/low/very low/dry, and temperature on a scale of very hot/hot/warm/mild/cool/cold/very cold, but the guide doesn’t actually give enough detail to be able to find these parameters at this granularity!

Damn, I hadn't gotten to the temperature section yet.

I've been thinking about precipitation though, and I came up with this; there are 7 factors each for high and low precipitation. If each high factor is scored as +1 and each low factor at -1, then for a particular area we could say

very wet = 5, 6, 7
wet = 3, 4
moderate = 1, 2
low = 0, -1
very low = -2, -3, -4
dry = -5, -6, -7

Thats the best I could come up with. What do you think?

Clever! I can’t believe I didn’t think of this. But I’m not sure how realistic this is — it sounds pretty useful as a model, but how do we know that e.g. one factor isn’t 10× more important than any of the others?

(Also, I can’t figure out how you get 7 factors — I can only count 5. Could you list them?)

[alice]

I think this is the biggest problem with that guide: the table at the end requires you to know precipitation on a scale of very wet/wet/moderate/low/very low/dry, and temperature on a scale of very hot/hot/warm/mild/cool/cold/very cold, but the guide doesn’t actually give enough detail to be able to find these parameters at this granularity!

I am reliably informed that this is because the person who wrote that guide wasn't well enough informed to do any better. Whether anybody is well enough informed is, of course, another matter.

[Nila_MadhaVa]

Snip

You bring up the same points that I wrestled with TBH. I must admit that I couldn't come up with any good answers. Since the writer of the guide notes that there is a good deal of approximation involved in the whole process, I figured it was a decent enough solution. Hopefully one of the members with a bit more knowledge will chime in and enlighten us.

I made a mistake, that should have been 6 factors each, which I enumerated as follows:
High precipitation:
- within the ITCZ, on or near the equator
- windward sides of mountains/islands
- onshore winds
- warm currents
- west coasts subject to the PZ
- location some way inland*

Low precipitation:
- STHZ
- rain shadow of mountains/leeward sides of islands
- offshore or parallel winds
- cold currents
- (cold currents) especially in low latitudes**
- interiors

* I'm probably misreading this. It might be intended as meaning "west coasts subject to PZ, and (including) some way inland (thereof)".
** I might be splitting hairs needlessly here, but the wording made me feel like it would be a multiplier.

[bradrn]

I finally got around to doing a bit more work on the climates. I tried using Nila_MadhaVa’s method to recalculate the amount of precipitation, and it worked very well! I then tried to find the temperature of each area using a similar method, but couldn’t figure it out. However, I think I managed to find some relevant factors:

High temperature:

• Near the equator/ITCZ
• Far from the coast
• (Far from the) west coast
• Little precipitation

Low temperature:

• Near the poles
• Near to the coast
• Lots of precipitation

Unfortunately I realised that my plate tectonics were horribly unrealistic, so I have to redo my continents before doing any more work on the climates. I’ll post a new map when I’ve figured out something more realistic.

[Nila_MadhaVa]

Good to hear you made some progress. I've gotten distracted myself, but not before I found this guide https://imgur.com/gallery/zTR3A/, which, if I'm remembering correctly, has something about the weight of certain factors regarding precipitation. Someone over on alternatehistory.com linked this video a little while back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lCbxMZ ... e=youtu.be. If you look in the description, there are links to some other videos that you might find informative.

I'd meant to share them earlier, but I completely forgot until reading your post.

[bradrn]

Good to hear you made some progress. I've gotten distracted myself, but not before I found this guide https://imgur.com/gallery/zTR3A/, which, if I'm remembering correctly, has something about the weight of certain factors regarding precipitation. Someone over on alternatehistory.com linked this video a little while back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lCbxMZ ... e=youtu.be. If you look in the description, there are links to some other videos that you might find informative.

I'd meant to share them earlier, but I completely forgot until reading your post.

Thanks Nila_MadhaVa! I haven’t read those thoroughly yet, but they look like excellent resources — when I start working on my climates again I’ll definitely use those as well!