Guildworld - Climate and Biome discussion

[J.Edward]

This thread is for discussion relating to guildworld climate, weather patterns, biomes and other similar stuff.
It's not an endorsement from me or anything - but people seemed to want a specific place to discuss these things so they don't get buried in the other discussions on the main thread.

I'm hoping Azelor can be the go to person here... it just works better if one person is the nexus for discussions.
But that can be worked out if need be.
Here's a world map for reference.

And with country info

New map scale - 1000 miles

New map scale - 500 miles

Plus, Redrobes' index page







Discussion open.

[Azélor]

Thank you! I hope to start this later today.

[Robulous]

Ok so here's a very rough climate map of ocean currents and prevailing winds, assuming an earth-like world with tropics at 23 degrees, rotating in the same direction as earth with sunrise in the east. I studied environmental science but I'm not an expert, this is just what I remember from climatology 101!

Blue/red are ocean currents, the blue bringing cool nutrient-rich waters often good for fishing, but dry air making the climate drier than average for latitude. Warm currents carry wet humid air so lead to increased rainfall.

Prevailing winds (yellow/purple) bring in weather from whichever direction they're blowing - eg Britain gets most of its weather from westerlies blowing from the Atlantic, so often mild and wet. Winds blowing from inland will bring dusty hot weather in summer, and cold dry weather in winter.

Obviously is affected by a huge amount of factors so it's just a guideline. But our world's tropical/equatorial zone it's mostly land, so would tend to be quite dry especially inland, particularly #22 the aptly named Dry Lands!

[Falconius]

I think with this amount of landmass in a mostly pangeatic formation would lead to different climate patterns than expected. For instance I don't think those tradewinds would be so straight forward. I think the mountains and dryness would have a large effect, and create eddies etc. If you look at this map you'll see the wind is quite affected even at higher altitudes, even by our "normal" sized mountains With such large landmass there is no doubt that there are land formations of significantly greater size in the guild world.

Here are my completely uneducated suppositions about the wind off the top of my head:

[Robulous]

Oh absolutely, it's just a guide! Trade winds blow most strongly over water so I'm only confident of their direction over water, you're totally right mountains hugely affect it. Continental wind are much more complicated, but the centre of our big equatorial continent is bound to be bone dry.

Westerlies and trade winds form "Hadley cells" of circulating air, separated between cold polar cells (the westerlies) and warm tropical cells (the trade winds). The dividing line is about 30 degrees on earth, just north/south of the lines of the tropics though it shifts back and forth. On a gasworld like Jupiter it forms continuous spirals which is why you get enduring patterns like the Great Red Spot, but on a planet it's affected by sea temperature, depth of water, shape and height of the land, etc etc.

[Falconius]

Yeah, it's actually pretty interesting to try and figure out what would be going on. Those two seas on either side of Domino's land have such a small entrance I bet it really limits their currents or alternatively causes those two seas to have currents they generate mostly independently. Or maybe not, they are more like very large channels than anything else. I'd also imagine the currents are very strong in the pole oceans. since there is nothing impeding them in any real sense, it would probably also limit ice production or break off huge icebergs to float off around the world.

[Azélor]

I did a test with a Mollweide projection (equal area) to get some numbers. The numbers are not exactly precise but they give us an idea.

First, let's start with what we know.

• The world circumference at the equator is 38 624,256 km
• Each line of latitude represents 15 degrees.
• The radius is 6147,23 km if I got my math right. The Earth is 6378 km.
• The world cover an area of 474 864 919,6 km2, the Earth is 510 067 000 km2. Mars is 144 800 000 km2.

I did a Mollweide projection, useful since it's equal area.

• On my Mollweide projection, the world covers 9 806 000 px.
• Of which Water covers 52% and land 48% (Earth 71% / 29%)
• The largest continent t is covering about 28,88% of the world.

Now, in order to go further, I will assume several things:

1. the original map is an equirectangular projection
2. the axial tilt is similar to Earth's. Otherwise, a lot of places will never receive rain and will be deserts
3. we will assume that a day is more or less 24 hours because it's more convenient and longer days would mean larger temperature differences. Unless somebody prefer the other way.
4. As Deadshade mentioned already in a previous message: The temperatures are approximately proportional to the cosine of the latitude. This directly follows from the fact that the planet is spherical. The maximum temperature must be below 100°C and above 0°C to allow for liquid water. So we will assume that it's not too different from Earth. Otherwise, we reduce the number of habitable places.
5. The atmosphere is made of 3 circulation cells
6. Magic exist, but we should try to ignore it for now.

[J.Edward]

Oh man - have to apologize here - the original circ was 18900, but that was before we added all those new lands in and increased the size of the map.
I never did calculate what it was now, which I should have.
When we started, 525 miles was equivalent to 10 degrees but that changed with the added lands.

I tried to recalculate the circumference and got a new figure of roughly 23,328 miles, with 15 degrees representing about 972 miles.


Edit - maybe it would be easier for me to just round it to 1000 miles per 15 degrees, for an even 24000 mile circ.
Then it'd be much easier for me to upload a nice new and more accurate scale - which would have more accurate increments.
I can do that if people would prefer that.
Here's what the new scale would be like.

If you want to do that, I'll post the new scale png here and over on the other threads.

[Goombac]

Just a question, does this new scale change the distances of things or just the curvature/circumference? Because I think most people have made their countries in relation to the original scale already.

EDIT: Just saw the comparison in the other thread, the difference seems negligible so it looks good.

[Will Phillips]

Glad you guys are taking a look at this - I haven't had my eyes on developments apart from the miopic view of my own map and its neighbors.

With the changes to contininents and their positions, I'm certain I need to readjust my weather - especially now that I'm not on the equator any more.