Ocean Circulation... (fictional planet, the usual one)

[Pixie]

I've got enough stuff lined up concerning this planet that I called Maward ("my world"), that I reckon it will take a few lifetimes to do it all... Recently, I've been a little demotivated about the massive whole-planet colored height map, which is a ongoing WIP without deadline, and I diverged into more and more complex stuff to do (sigh!)...

This involved refreshing my knowledge on Thermohaline circulation (you know, the underwater ocean currents that Nemo took with the turtles), which I had previously left out of the climatic system. Someone, somewhere in this forum, mentioned how important this system is and, after reading about it, I strongly strongly agree.

Well, anyhow, I've been scribbling notes, looking at specific Earth maps about this issue, reading scientific literature and devising the whole surface water / deep water churning for Maward. That is quite complex and I won't bother anyone about it, just like I didn't bother doing a WIP. However, in the middle of my trials and note taking, I started a test style, which quite effortlessly grew into a fully fledged map.

This is it - like the mid-XXth century Abi Valley map, the Geographical Embassy Publishing Co. signs it again. This time clearly a digital creation, meant to be used in some site called OceanAware.Org, back in 2006 (I think)

NorthPoleCirculation(final).jpg

[Azélor]

It looks great, too bad the Geographical Embassy forgot to mention the map projections used.

And I have no idea if your water dynamics make sense.

[Pixie]

Thank you for the comment

The thing with the projection is that "the geographical embassy" started this one out as a screen grab from Google Earth with a low-res map of Maward layered on top, and retraced the lines from the PrintScreen image... And "the geographical embassy" did this without taking notes, as it was just a draft/scribble... That's why, I honestly have no idea what projection it is. Seems ortographic, but I don't know where it's centered and I suspect Google Earth uses something a little more complex than simple ortographic, and that it also depends on the level of zoom. Still, if you know about projections used on Google Earth, I'm interested in learning about that.
Though, normally, a map like this science-communication-to-the-masses, would stick to the fundamental. Which means, other than our discussion here at the map-making end of things, it's no problem that I don't know which projection I'm using.

As for the water dynamics, I'm content with what I devised, although it's highly conjectural. The north pole of Maward has aspects that are comparable to Earth, some of it with the North Atlantic, some of it with Antartica. I modeled the behaviour of Maward's currents on those aspects and registered a bit of the reasoning in the text around the wrapping the globe. The south pole, however, is nothing like Earth. It's an open sea, with the "natural" path for wind driven currents broken in a pair of regions. That one is taking a little more time to produce, but I think i'm just about nailing it..

As for the visual aspect... Colors, fonts, layout and readability... The map is obviously supposed to be used as an educational resource on an online media. In this view, Good/Bad/So-and-so?

[Ilanthar]

That's pretty easy to read and nice looking for me Pixie. Good idea to put the intermediate currents, I'm not used to see those on this kind of maps. I would have made them in a color between red and blue (so purple) to make the thing even more obvious and the gradient on each side more smooth.

[Pixie]

Thank you for the comment Ilanthar. I can't take credit for showing intermediate currents, it appears, for example, in this page.

As for using purple for intermediate, I hadn't think of it - green feels like a "natural midway". I tried purple just now, and, at least to me, it feels less intermediate. If I had to guess, it is down to the temperature of the color, purple seems colder than blue, green feels warmer.

About the smooth gradient - I don't understand what you mean. Could you explain?

[Ilanthar]

You're welcome! I was thinking of something like this.
Currents.png
Personnally, I don't find the purple so "cold", maybe you used a darker one?

[Pixie]

Oh, you mean, longer transitions between the two colors (that's what you mean by smooth gradient, ok, ok) I can try that.

I tried several purples and a few other colors, like lighter magenta, cyan, greyish cyan, etc. And I also tried darkening the blue, to make it look colder. In the end, I went back to the original colors, as they keep the map, in some way, simpler/clearer. Still, many thanks for the suggestion.

[Ilanthar]

Again, you're welcome! My suggestion is just an aesthetic one (in my eye, at least). If your currents rise or go deep abruptly, I suppose a short transition is a good one. It depends completely of what you want to achieve/show. It's your map and your concept before all!

[Pixie]

You've raised a good point there. The length of the transition should depend on how abrupt is the sink/rise... How lazy of me not to think about that!

I will definitely do that for the remaining 3 maps of this series (whenever I complete them)!