Realistic climate design.pdf
To my knowledge this is the first Tutorial about climate and biome design for cartography on these boards.
All comments, questions, criticism welcome.
If the Tutorial was helpful for you, thanks to rate the thread.
Realistic CLIMATE DESIGN for cartography
Realistic climate design.pdf
To my knowledge this is the first Tutorial about climate and biome design for cartography on these boards.
All comments, questions, criticism welcome.
If the Tutorial was helpful for you, thanks to rate the thread.
There is climate cookbook somewhere http://web.archive.org/web/201306191...ook.html#basic
Thanks for your comment Azelor, yes I know this one.
I didn't find it very practical for cartography because :
- it doesn't explain clearly the general oceanic and atmospheric circulation (e.g low pressure and high pressure zones are consequence of global circulation and not cause)
- it doesn't explain at all how one goes from climates to biomes. The variables are neither quantified nor explained so that it's up to everybody to interpret what is "hot" and what is merely "warm" and what is "moderately wet" and what is merely "low wet".
What I tried in this tutorial was to put focus on simplicity and a well defined workflow that can guide everybody from an empty planet to biomes with no initial climatic knowledge. Whether I succeeded can be only told by the readers.
On the other hand your link shows nicely what a monsoon regime is and it is Worth to be read too.
I have omitted monsoons on purpose because their dynamics which overrides the general circulation is still not well understood. It depends on the size of the continent and the contiguous ocean but it is not clear what both should be to give rise to a monsoon regime. So I preferred to avoid a too "technical" analysis with unclear conclusions.
I agree, I think your guide covers most of the basics. And also, that climate are not really informative on the local biome. Most people should skip the small differences. (Dwa vs Dfa/ moist vs wet vs rain forest)
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=27118
Pixie has done a cool tutorial with a similar goal, though I havent had a chance to check yours out yet, I thought Id point it out here for you.
Thanks for you comment Axelton.Originally Posted by Axelton
I also knew Pixie's very well done post.
The point I would make, Azelor has already made it.
Basically the philosophy of my tutorial was to try to explain why currents, winds and biomes are what they are at a fundamental (physical) level and not so much how this or that detail can be drawn.
I wanted that a reader acquires the few basic principles (atmospheric cells, Coriolis force, Whittaker diagram) which would allow him to define realistic climates and biomes by himself for any fantasy planet without having to look at some list of empirical recipes all the time.
For example Pixie doesn't mention thermohaline circulation but describes in detail and correctly wind driven currents which are only part of the global oceanic circulation.
Also the details Pixie considers about the ITCZ oscillation lead to much work which has little impact globally even if it may have a large impact locally depending on the topography details of your fantasy planet.
This, like Azelor says, has for consequence that the empirical "cooking book recipes" may lead to an accumulation of smaller mistakes which end with something that is globally not correct. For instance you won't get a Gulf Stream like local current (as well as other large currents) without considering the global thermohaline circulation.
My solution to this dilemma was to say : "Ignore currents or if you really want a thermohaline circulation impacting your map, just do it arbitrary BUT respect the physical constraints A and B".
In any case the user and reader being the king, I can update my tutorial by including more explanation about of this or that if it is what users wish.
The only thing I can not change is the philosophy - I want to provide to people a small number of fundamental Tools that they can understand and use by themselves and not a list of many empirical rules to be applied as written.
The main problem with Pixie method is that he tries to make something accurate by using relatively subjective placements. The result is the addition of several subjective layers of information. Making a small deviation on a layer might not change result much but the sum might give something totally inaccurate.
Of course, Pixie managed to get results that looked really good. Generally the climates look ok, but it's not possible to know where he could have made mistakes. To have something accurate would require us to fully understand Earth climates (we don't) and use a powerful computer to get all the important variables.
Still, sometimes approximations are better than total randomness.
I missed this when it came out, that was a good read. Also the world used as an example in the tutorial looks really cool, is that a project of yours? I'd love to see how it came to be.
Thanks Groovey.
No the fantasy world was just there for an example how the physics work. I used a project by somebody (name forgotten) whom I helped in creating a realistic climate and copied and edited the pictures that I mailed him to help.
I just remember that I had him change his mountains' location because it was leading to climates that were very different from what he expected.
As he didn't contact me after I designed the climates/biomes for him, I have no idea if or whether the project was finished.
I see. Shame, but thanks for the info!
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