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Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 01:00
by Salmoneus
Important to consider how old the mountains are.

Young mountains chains are maybe just thin chains, maybe with some foothills on the far side. Like the Alps, or the Andes.

Older mountain chains, the foothills turn into a plateau, but then they start to collapse. What you get is a set of connected basin structures, surrounded by mountains on both sides. Giving you oval mountain chains, not lines. In the basins, they can be almost as high as the mountains, or massively lower but still high, or low. With the himalaya, the three big ones are tibet (very high, but surrounded by higher mountains), the taklamakan (high), and jungaria (low). But look how much of Asia is dominated by the ripples off the back off the himalaya.

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 21:15
by sangi39
Salmoneus wrote:Important to consider how old the mountains are.

Young mountains chains are maybe just thin chains, maybe with some foothills on the far side. Like the Alps, or the Andes.

Older mountain chains, the foothills turn into a plateau, but then they start to collapse. What you get is a set of connected basin structures, surrounded by mountains on both sides. Giving you oval mountain chains, not lines. In the basins, they can be almost as high as the mountains, or massively lower but still high, or low. With the himalaya, the three big ones are tibet (very high, but surrounded by higher mountains), the taklamakan (high), and jungaria (low). But look how much of Asia is dominated by the ripples off the back off the himalaya.
Ah, cool [:)] Well I hope I've understood it well enough, and I've come up with this very brief sketch of where the plateaus (in red) and basins (in yellow) might be:

Image

Although I think maybe the mountains in Mistaya might need something along their south-eastern edge as well.

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 00:14
by sangi39
I ended up not working on this very much after Christmas (then New Year's came, then my wife's birthday and then two weeks away from my laptop [:P]) so I've spent most of my time trying to put all the information I had into layers on GIMP, which, because I left doing that for so long, took me some time [:P]

Anyway, I have gone a little further, not much. Right now I have a slightly more detailed temperature map for July and January, but it's still very much based on latitude:

January:

Image

July:

Image

There's no indication of tempertures being affected by mountain ranges or glaciers and I haven't yet gotten to indicating how surface temperature in the oceans and nearer the coast is affected by ocean currents (the thicker blue lines indicate equatorial counter-currents, but I'm not too sure on them), but in general it seems roughly correct.

It looks a bit weird because of the lack of smooth transition in temperatures between the ocean and the land, but looking at this site:

7(m) Global Surface Temperature Distribution

... it seems okay. The land is warmer in July further north than in the ocean and vice versa in southern January. The one problem is the lack of large, wide landmasses on Earth, other than Australia, in the southern hemisphere whereas on Yantas there's Sirden [:)]

Anyway, hope that makes sense. There's no set scale yet other than red is really hot and dark blue is really cold, but I'm hoping it should be fairly obvious what's going on [:)]

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 16:12
by sangi39
Okay, so to add to my last post, I've tried taking ocean currents into account, changing the temperature of the coasts and oceans step by step. This what I have so far for January:

Image

Is this realistic or have I gone wrong somewhere?

(the brown lines indicate newer, ongoing mountain formation phases, while those in purple are remnant ranges from now inactive mountain formation phases [:)])

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 15:53
by sangi39
Ok, so I've been working on a basic pressure map this morning/early afternoon and this is where I've got to so far for Yantas in July (northern summer, southern winter):

Image

And for Yantas in January (northern winter, southern summer)

Image

Now, I've followed the climate cookbook as best I can, but I get the feeling I've gone wrong in a number of places through lack of understanding. For example, I'm not too sure whether I've got the centres of those pressure zones, e.g. over the oceans and lands, correct or whether I've got the mergers of pressure zones quite right.

Hope someone might be able to help out [:)]

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 21:10
by cntrational
I must say you've put in quite the effort into getting the details of the world right. Bravo!

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 25 Feb 2014 22:00
by sangi39
cntrational wrote:I must say you've put in quite the effort into getting the details of the world right. Bravo!
Trying to [:P] Work keeps getting in the way and I'm never entirely sure if what I'm coming out with is "right", and since it can be weeks between working on any given level, sometimes I forget what I was doing lol. It's definitely feeling like it's worth it though, and I'm hoping that in the end, even though the quality of the map won't necessarily be all that good, the detail should make the world plausible and consistent [:)]

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 04 Mar 2014 17:17
by sangi39
Ok, so, after a week of non-stop work in the real-world so that I can pay bills, I haven't managed to get too far, however, I think I can tell a few things about where this might go:

July (northern summer, southern winter)

Image


January (northern winter, southern summer)

Image

It looks like there might three monsoon zones, a troipcal monsoon on the eastern coast of Mistaya, a temperate monsoon on the eastern coast of Arenda (both in the northern hemisphere) and a second temperate monsoon on the far eastern coast of Sirden (in the souther hemisphere). There might be a fourth on the east coast of the large island to the south-west of Hungas (which looks like it could border a temperate or a tropical monsoon given the latitude).

If this is all roughly correct, my next step will be to use a method suggested by eternalsage here (post 28 of the thread) in order to set up precipitation levels. You can already probably guess some trends, e.g. the southern interior of Arenda and several areas of Sirden will likely be deserts, but I can't be any more specific than that right now [:)]

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Apr 2014 14:22
by sangi39
So, I haven't posted on Yantas here in over a month and I've barely worked on it at all over the last two weeks, but here's my current attempt at a climate map, following the guidelines set by the Climate Cookbook as best as I could:

Image

The white lines indicate mountain ranges, and I haven't worked on the climates for most of the islands, but I'm hoping everything roughly fits where it'd be expected to be...

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 12 Apr 2015 16:53
by sangi39
Definitely need to get back to working on this. The amount of time I was dedicating to this project took a major hit around May/June last year due to real-world stuff that I've mentioned elsewhere on the board and I never really got round to reassigning any time back to it. I think it's been long enough that I should really pick things up where I left off [:)]

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 12 Apr 2015 18:12
by gestaltist
sangi39 wrote:Definitely need to get back to working on this. The amount of time I was dedicating to this project took a major hit around May/June last year due to real-world stuff that I've mentioned elsewhere on the board and I never really got round to reassigning any time back to it. I think it's been long enough that I should really pick things up where I left off [:)]
Please do. I have just spent two weeks working on the climate for the World of Twin Suns. It would be nice to have someone at the same stage in development, so to say.

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 12 Apr 2015 22:13
by sangi39
gestaltist wrote:
sangi39 wrote:Definitely need to get back to working on this. The amount of time I was dedicating to this project took a major hit around May/June last year due to real-world stuff that I've mentioned elsewhere on the board and I never really got round to reassigning any time back to it. I think it's been long enough that I should really pick things up where I left off [:)]
Please do. I have just spent two weeks working on the climate for the World of Twin Suns. It would be nice to have someone at the same stage in development, so to say.
As you might be able to tell, I'm struggling a fair bit with climates, as well as elevation. For example, the mountains in north-eastern to eastern Arenda might extend a fair way into the continent, resulting from a collision of two continental landmasses, so it might be reasonable to say that the Arendan desert doesn't extent nearly as far east as it does in my most recent update, and the northern portion of the Western Sirdic desert might not exist at all for similar reasons. However, since I haven't quite figured out elevation beyond "some mountains might be here" and climate beyond "this sort of thing happens at these latitudes", I've not been able to move further to make those sorts of statements about the Arendan and Western Sirdic deserts definite.

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 12 Apr 2015 23:18
by gestaltist
Is your axial tilt and insolation the same as on Earth?

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 12 Apr 2015 23:24
by sangi39
gestaltist wrote:Is your axial tilt and insolation the same as on Earth?
Pretty much, yeah. I didn't want to overload myself with having to figure out what effect a different axial tilt and insolation would have on climate, so I just left those the same [:)]

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 12:17
by gestaltist
I am by no means an expert. My knowledge of climatology is based on the research I’ve done in the last year or so. (I was working on a weather simulator as a hobby programming project but got stuck when trying to simulate wind on a day-by-day basis.) For my conworld, I have used Geoff Eddy’s climate cookbook and other resources. So take my advice with a grain of salt.

That said, I think you would benefit from adding ocean currents and precipitation to the mix. Ocean currents are important because they affect both temperature (they are called warm and cold currents for a reason) and precipitation (warm currents = more rain, cold currents = less rain) - and they are crucial for seafaring. Precipitation goes without saying: the same place can be a desert, a steppe or have a moderate continental climate depending on the levels of rain it receives.

What I would do: take your pressure zones and figure out the dominant winds from them. Make a new map with the winds. Based on the winds, figure out the main ocean currents (only the surface currents have strong and direct effect on climate and they are driven by wind). Divide them into warm (poleward), cold (equatorward) and „neutral“ (parallel to the equator). The ocean currents should turn out to be pretty stable throughout the year. If they aren't, you probably did something wrong. In the World of Twin Suns, I have one place where they are radically different: the large continent sitting on the north pole created a strong enough influence to push the polar front southward in winter which reverses the winds and the currents along the coast of that continent. It is very atypical, though. Enough so that my first reaction when I saw it was: damn, where have I screwed up? [;)]

Only after all this should you make the temperature map: both ocean currents and rain affect temperature (clouds reduce insolation but also reduce the amount of heat being radiated out of the atmosphere, especially on continents in winter).

Then, based on your precipitation and temperature maps, you will be able to create a semi-realistic climate map. (And also - you will be able to figure out where the main rivers start which is rather important.)

It is a lot of work: I needed two weeks to do all this, and I had one of these two weeks off work. And I completely screwed up the first two times and had to start over. So you need to decide if you are willing to put this amount of effort into the climate. In my opinion, it was worth it. I would have gotten some parts of the world totally wrong (e.g., I would have desert instead of savanna on one continent). I would never have imagined the situation on my northern continent - a de facto „polar monsoon“ - something unheard of on Earth. And I would probably stick to the few places I had a clear picture of in my mind for my concultures. And now I have a complete living planet before me.

Good luck!

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 13:40
by sangi39
I've been going down what seems to be a fairly haphazard process. The general pattern I've tried to stick to is:

1) Basic temperature maps (July vs. January) based on latitude alone (with different shifts over land and ocean).
2) Add ocean currents
3) Second temperature map taking into account ocean currents
4) Add pressure followed by wind (July vs. January)
5) Second ocean currents map taking into account wind direction
6) Add precipitation (July vs. January)
7) Third temperature map taking into account precipitation (July vs. January)
8) Develop climate map (July vs. January)

But I'll kind of half do maps for some of those steps whenever I feel like I need a bit of a break just to see what I might end up dealing with ahead of time, see if on the right track in general.

It was based mainly on The Climate Cookbook but also based on some advice given by Salmoneus who suggested that since the various aspects of climate are quite interrelated, it might make sense to do one thing, then another and then go back to see how the second things affects the first and so on and so on.

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 14:19
by Znex
Wow, this has got to be a massive thing you've undertaken to do. I'm only barely understanding the mechanics behind everything going on especially in some of those technical posts, but your pictures are very illustrative in showing what you're doing and what's going on.

I can't wait for more posts about your physical conworld. [:D]

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 14:39
by sangi39
Znex wrote:Wow, this has got to be a massive thing you've undertaken to do. I'm only barely understanding the mechanics behind everything going on especially in some of those technical posts, but your pictures are very illustrative in showing what you're doing and what's going on.

I can't wait for more posts about your physical conworld. [:D]
This is nothing compared to some of the stuff I've been following over at the Cartographers' Guild. I've got something like five go-to threads that started around the same time as mine that are simply amazing in terms of what they've gotten done.

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 14:40
by gestaltist
You make me think maybe I should share my climate maps for the World of Twin Suns...

Re: Yantas - Birth of a New World

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 15:35
by sangi39
gestaltist wrote:You make me think maybe I should share my climate maps for the World of Twin Suns...
I can't see any reason why you shouldn't [:)]