The start of and In-Depth Endeavor

[SkarValidus]

As promised, here is the pressure animation and the July wind chart (from two angles). Comments and critiques are welcome!

EDIT: Looks like you'll have to download the animation and play it back offline. Sorry. Also, on the wind chart, the yellow line is equator, the red is tropic, and the cyan is polar front. The wind travels from the dots along the lines, ok?

[jwbjerk]

As promised, here is the pressure animation and the July wind chart (from two angles). Comments and critiques are welcome!

EDIT: Looks like you'll have to download the animation and play it back offline. Sorry. Also, on the wind chart, the yellow line is equator, the red is tropic, and the cyan is polar front. The wind travels from the dots along the lines, ok?

If i understand what your doing, the pressure is not quite right.

In winter you tend to get high pressure areas over sufficiently large continents. In summer the pressure tends to be lower over contents. "Summer" and "winter" are not at the same time in the north and south hemispheres. They are opposite. And at the equator, since there are essentially no seasons, you don't get the winter/summer high/low thing going on.

If i'm looking at your map right, you've created the pressure as if the whole globe experienced the same season at the same time.


Also, unless you are using a fancy projection i'm not aware of, you continents are going to be badly pinched if you put this map on a sphere.

[SkarValidus]

Wow... I never even considered north and south temperatures being opposite. Basically, I'll have to swap half of each map, to compensate for that. That will mean I have to keep working on the air currents. If I'm understanding you right, you're saying that the equator continents need to stay low-pressure all year round, and the polar ones high-pressure. Now that I think about it, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for that tip, and you've been a really good help in my quest, so thank you! By the way, you just made me feel like I have an iq of 85... In a really good and productive way.

Oh, and the projection I'm using is definitely wierd. The big world map I have looks pretty much just like this, with no perspective/pinching. Before I try to put it on a globe, I plan to apply some distortion to balance it all out and make it look normal. Again, thanks for your insight.

[jwbjerk]

If I'm understanding you right, you're saying that the equator continents need to stay low-pressure all year round, and the polar ones high-pressure.

No, at least on earth, the equator is more or less "medium" pressure, without large seasonal swings. The poles however, have extreme seasonal swings, since in their summer the sun hardly sets. Polar landmasses can form high pressure zones in their winter, if they are big enough.
Check out this page, especially the pictures.

Of course if your planet has a radically different axial tilt, or an eccentric orbit (i.e. is significantly different from earth) some of these things would change.

Now that I think about it, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for that tip, and you've been a really good help in my quest, so thank you! By the way, you just made me feel like I have an iq of 85... In a really good and productive way.

Don't feel stupid this is unintuitive stuff. I've gone through the whole process before, but had to recheck my sources to refresh my vague memory of how this all worked. I don't think very many map-makers bother with this.

Oh, and the projection I'm using is definitely wierd. The big world map I have looks pretty much just like this, with no perspective/pinching. Before I try to put it on a globe, I plan to apply some distortion to balance it all out and make it look normal.

I'm no master of projections, but the more i look at this the more i think you can't do that, unless you have your equator and tropic lines in the wrong place.

Your Map is seamless on the right and left sides (as it should be), but also on the top and bottom (as it should not be). You don't travel to the north pole, step over a line and find yourself in the south pole, which is what (if i understand it right) your map is doing. Look at your second wind image. You have the lines that should form the arctic and antarctic circles right next to each other-- that can't happen, unless maybe this is some hyper-dimensional shape.