WIP Please help me with my climates

[samkatz]

You are Lucky to have very regular continental shapes with no crazy peninsulas and quasi closed seas

What about the sea between the two western continents. I know it's not completely closed, but it just occurred to me that it may cause some weirdness. Or is what I have likely?

Any additional detail you might add would be irrelevant and/or wrong because you have no idea what the ocean dynamics on your planet would be.
The only thing that is sure is that it would be very different from the Earth so that what happens on the Earth can't be used as guide.

Does this necessarily mean that additional detail would be wrong, or does it give me a certain amount of freedom?

[Deadshade]

What about the sea between the two western continents. I know it's not completely closed, but it just occurred to me that it may cause some weirdness. Or is what I have likely?

No it is far from closed. More like the Gulf of Bengal. No special weirdness. It's more the mountains than the Gulf that will create some asymetry due to the rain shadow as I explained in teh previous post.

Does this necessarily mean that additional detail would be wrong, or does it give me a certain amount of freedom?

Both. Additionnal details would probably be wrong. But as what you do is a map and not running a coupled climate model, you could always construct a quasi arbitrary oceanic circulation that would justify this or that climate detail and nobody could see that your currents are wrong.
So if you get your deserts, tropical forests, rain shadows and temperate regions right, you are quite free to fill in with plausible détails for the rest.

It is like if you correctly put a full lighted region (white] and a full shadowed region (black) on an object. It then doesn't matter much what kind of grey gradient you use to fill up the rest to get a realistically looking object.

[samkatz]

No it is far from closed. More like the Gulf of Bengal. No special weirdness. It's more the mountains than the Gulf that will create some asymetry due to the rain shadow as I explained in teh previous post.

Sorry, my question was ambiguous. I meant the narrow one with savanna and steppe on its northern shore and rainforest, mountains, and savanna on the southern shore, with large amount of islands to the east and west.

[Deadshade]

Sorry, my question was ambiguous. I meant the narrow one with savanna and steppe on its northern shore and rainforest, mountains, and savanna on the southern shore, with large amount of islands to the east and west.

OK I hope I see what you are talking about - the waterway running from E to NW between the 2 west continents.
It is entirely located between equator and 30° N.
That means that the dominating circulation is from NE to W/SW. So the norther shore is very dry (btw the S/SW part of the N continent is probably the driest and hottest place on your planet so that's why it is the least likely place to find lakes).

The other side on the S shore is very different. As the hot air returning to the equator crosses the warm waterway, it loads humidity and releases it above the continent southwards.
Especially the small mountain range between 10° and equator will have abundant rains on its N side.
The very northern side of the S shore lies at the boundary between the Hadley and the Ferrel cell and you'll have a desert there as I already wrote some posts ago.

So the whole S shore starts with the desert north and then goes fast over to a hot and humid climate as you move southeastwards along the shore.
Basically the presence of this waterway where you put it has little/no effect on the N shore but makes the S shore much wetter than it would be without the waterway.

[samkatz]

Thanks so much for all the help.

One more question: Would those lakes be more likely further to the east on the same continent?

[Deadshade]

Thanks so much for all the help.

One more question: Would those lakes be more likely further to the east on the same continent?

No, farther east it's even hotter and drier. Basically the whole E-W band between 25-35 is a desert .
Actually it's hard to see where it rains at all. Below 30° the dominant circulation is from NE to SW so the air is coming from a desert and is hot and dry.
Between 30 and 60 the westerlies dominate so the eastern half gets again only dry air.. And on top there is a mountain range on the E side which stops any possible wet air coming from the ocean in the E.

So the only place that could be wet is the NW side let's say between 40 and 60. Perhaps the SE coast could have a monsoon seasonal regime around the 40ies but it's not sure at all - monsoons are not well understood.
There won't be many rivers in the interior either and it lacks mountains in the NW part that could catch some rain coming with the westerlies (think Vancouver) and send rivers towards W or SW.

It's a very bad and hostile place you created there

[samkatz]

Hm. Could a strategically placed mountain range in the west make the climate a little wetter?

[Deadshade]

Hm. Could a strategically placed mountain range in the west make the climate a little wetter?

Sure.
The climate of the NW shore (around the 50ies) is like Vancouver.
On top around the 60ies the wet air could meet on occasion very cold air coming from the N pole and that generates rain/snow too.
So if you put a mountan range running broadly from NE to SW between the 60ies and the 30ies at about the location where the 2 western lakes are, you would get a wet climate everywhere west of this range. Very wet on the west slopes of the range.
Then this range would generate many rivers flowing broadly N, W, S.

The corollary is that the region east of the range would be in the rain shadow and therefore even drier than it already is. In this case the desert would start immediately at the E slopes of the range broadly between 25-35 and extend as far as the mountain range on the E shore..
This eastern 2/3 of the continent would look like hell on Earth

[samkatz]

Anything else that you think might make it less desolate?

[Deadshade]

Anything else that you think might make it less desolate?

I am afraid not much. If you want to have a realistic climate, then you put the continent in a place where the deserts, the Hadley cell and the dominating westerlies simply lead to a big Sahara.
As I already said, the only additionnal way is to postulate SE seasonal monsoons (this is the artistic freedom I have been talking about) and then the SE part would be less desolate with an abundant summer rain season (but dry winter).

And I guess you don't want (rightly so !) to move continents around and/or to change their sizes and shapes after all the time investment you did in your map.