List the Most Common "Reality" Errors!

[Azélor]

Hot currents can transport more moisture

[Hai-Etlik]

It's worth noting that the rotation is what defines the cardinal directions. East is the direction facing with the planet's rotation, and north is the direction you get by making a quarter turn to the left from east. There are other equivalent ways of defining them such as north being the direction around which the planet spins counterclockwise (picture yourself at the centre looking at the north pole). The alternative is to pick some wider north such as north for the star, north for one of the planets, the normal to the plane of one of the planets, the average of the normal to the planes of the planets, the normal to the plane of the galaxy (if the galaxy is spiral or lenticular) etc. and then pick the direction along the rotational axis closest to that, but this doesn't really have any benefit and is much more complicated.

Also "north" and "south" have two different meanings that I've used interchangeably because explaining the difference in the middle of the previous paragraph would have been unwieldy. The direction the pole is pointing, and the direction you need to travel from a particular point to reach the pole. The former is is the same for the whole planet, while the latter is a field of different directions in 3D space covering the surface. East and west only have meaning along the surface.

This is a semantic issue. It's a matter of what the words "north", "south", "east", and "west" mean. What's there in reality is just a lump of matter spinning along some arbitrary axis.

[Sarithus]

Hopefully this isn't too stupid of a question to ask, but on the subject of point 8, would Tibet and Mongolia and other countries around that area be greener if the Himalayas weren't there? Can I get more information on what I think is something to do with 'rain shadow' please? It just seems to me like those deserts (or not exactly deserts) extend too far up. kazakhstan interests me because it's not really behind the Himalayas but it's not as green as the line that extends from Ukraine.

[Qoff]

Which of those rules this map broke so far?

[Chick]

Hopefully this isn't too stupid of a question to ask, but on the subject of point 8, would Tibet and Mongolia and other countries around that area be greener if the Himalayas weren't there? Can I get more information on what I think is something to do with 'rain shadow' please? It just seems to me like those deserts (or not exactly deserts) extend too far up. kazakhstan interests me because it's not really behind the Himalayas but it's not as green as the line that extends from Ukraine.

Deserts can form wherever there is not enough moisture to grow things. The dry latitudes are dry due to atmospheric circulation. The "rain shadow" of a mountain range is a good example of dryness due to something else.

(Simple explanation)
When a mountain range is approximately perpendicular to the prevailing wind direction, the wind is forced up and over the mountains and down the lee side. When the air is forced upward on the windward side of the mountains, it cools as it rises and since cool air can hold less moisture, it rains a lot of the moisture out of the air. Then when that cool air with less moisture descends the lee side of the mountains, it warms back up, but since warm air can hold a lot more moisture, the relative humidity of that air is very low. Hence, little rain, rain shadow of the mountains, and desert.

(More technical explanation)
The rising air cools at the dry adiabatic lapse rate until it reaches the dew point and begins to condense and rain the moisture. Thereafter it cools at the wet adiabatic lapse rate until it reaches the mountain peak line and begins to descend. The descending air warms at the dry adiabatic lapse rate all the way down. Since the dry adiabatic lapse rate is higher than the wet, the air ends up not only dryer, but also hotter than when it started over the mountains.

For more information, search "Foehn wind".

[Larb]

If you look up a rainfall map of Washington State in the US you can see a really good example of rain shadow due to the Cascades.

[Deadshade]

That's true, deserts are more common on the western side of the continents with a normal planet rotation. I'm not sure but I think it's because the winds blow toward the west at that latitude.

Yes this is due to the Coriolis force. This force is due to the rotation and its direction is given by the vectorial product of the rotation vector (parallel to the rotation axis) and the velocity of the air parcel.
This force is responsible for the rotation of dépressions, anticyclones and hurricanes and for the location of deserts among others.

So for instance when the Hadley circulation gets the dry air to drop to the tropics, it starts its return to the equator (e.g southward in N hemisphere) on ground level.
But the Coriolis force deviates it towards west so that the western side of a continent gets the dry air coming from the desert whil the eastern side gets a less dry air that's coming from the ocean.
This is very schematic, is valid only for the Hadley cells and can be perturbed by mountains and oceanic currents.
If you inverted the rotation of the planet, the Coriolis force would act in the opposite direction.

What happens above the Hadley cell (e.g temperate latitudes) is more complex but the Coriolis force acts there too.

[Sarithus]

Apologies if I'm turning this into a thread to ask random questions but it saves me creating a new one just for this.

I'm sure it can be explained, but I was looking around google maps and I came across a river that just seems to split. Thoughts on this?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@7.802.../data=!3m1!1e3

Edit: there's all sorts of weird stuff that goes against what I've been taught looking along the white nile.

[Azélor]

Apologies if I'm turning this into a thread to ask random questions but it saves me creating a new one just for this.

I'm sure it can be explained, but I was looking around google maps and I came across a river that just seems to split. Thoughts on this?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@7.802.../data=!3m1!1e3

Edit: there's all sorts of weird stuff that goes against what I've been taught looking along the white nile.

It's not splitting. It's flowing toward the north

[Chick]

Apologies if I'm turning this into a thread to ask random questions but it saves me creating a new one just for this.

I'm sure it can be explained, but I was looking around google maps and I came across a river that just seems to split. Thoughts on this?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@7.802.../data=!3m1!1e3

Edit: there's all sorts of weird stuff that goes against what I've been taught looking along the white nile.

I believe what you are looking at is an old meander bed that the river has abandoned. There is a small stream left there which is draining northward into the river from the large triangular patch, and southward into the river from the other side of that triangular patch. In any case, the river has not split in any way, at most this is a anastomosing channel. The river itself continues on its way despite this little side connection.

Here is an example of an anastomosing river: http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/...a.grid-6x2.jpg

This is not splitting, it is merely making a variety of channels which eventually rejoin. Similarly around a single island, the river does not split, only the channels do, and then they rejoin.

Even in a delta, the river is not splitting, it's anastomosing but reaches the sea before the channels rejoin.