WIP (sort of tutorial to be) : Climates, applying Geoff's Cookbook at detail (some)

[Naima]

Hi have a question on Climates ...

Are they regulated only by temperature and rainfall? SO can I find a tropical rainforest in northern area if there are right conditions? or an alpine tundra at equator if high enough?

Can elevation altitude be considered for a relative "coldness" and lati

[Azélor]

Yes the Koppen classification mainly use these two to classify the climates. But others might use vegetation or something else to classify.
But rainfall depend on wind direction. this mean that some climates always appear at specific places. For example: Mediterranean climates are always on the west coast near a body of water.

Alpine tundra is still a tundra: The temperature drop by about 5,5°C for each 1000m. So if you consider that the average yearly temperature at the equator is around 25 to 35 °C then altitude would be around 4500m and 6400m or maybe more than that depending on the surroundings. But if it's much higher than that the climate become too cold to be considered a tundra and become land of eternal ice.

[ascanius]

The one thing I'm having trouble understanding is why the majority of rainfall seems to occur during the summer and the dry seasons seem to be during the winter and not the summer. The only thing I can come up with to explain this is that the rain maps are not for summer and winter exactly but for fall and spring. With the summer rain map showing fall and winter shows spring. If this is true than wouldn't this alter how we are getting our climates on the map.

[Naima]

I wonder how coudl Mongolia be a tropical land in the miocene - pliocene , it didn't seem to be that much lower latitude .

[Azélor]

The one thing I'm having trouble understanding is why the majority of rainfall seems to occur during the summer and the dry seasons seem to be during the winter and not the summer. The only thing I can come up with to explain this is that the rain maps are not for summer and winter exactly but for fall and spring. With the summer rain map showing fall and winter shows spring. If this is true than wouldn't this alter how we are getting our climates on the map.

For different reasons:

areas subject to monsoon receive a lot of rain in the summer. Monsoon always occur in summer because it's the result of high temperature over the land and lower temperature over the sea... This only happens in summer
more or less : Am,Aw, Cfa, Cwa, Cwb, Dwa, Dwb and sometimes: BSh and possibly Af
some of these place like southern USA are not officially recognized as having a monsoon but they have the same precipitation pattern

The other thing to consider is that cold air contain less moisture than hot air = less rain when it's cold. And also less evaporation.

A lot of the temperate climates receive rain all year long. Mainly: Af, Cfb, Cfc, Cfa (sometimes), Dfa, Dfb.




Finally, this may not be the perfect answer but it is probably because not all climates have the same number of season. Some have 4, some have 2, and some have only 1 because there is little variation over the course of the year.

[Pixie]

So, there is a dramatic difference between the "rain pattern" in a region and the "available humidity". This is because of the effect of temperature on evaporation as discussed above.

So I used this key (already mentioned in Azelor's "sister thread")

Lower precipitation than evaporation (ARID seasons)
Very Hot + Moderate/Low/Dry
Hot + Low/Dry
Warm + Dry
Mild + Dry

Roughly equal precipitation to evaporation (SEMI-ARID seasons)
Very Hot + Wet
Hot + Moderate
Warm + Low
Mild + Low
Cold + Dry
Very Cold + Dry

Higher precipitation than evaporation (HUMID seasons)
All remaining combos

Palamb's humidity maps result in this (yellow is arid, lime-green is semi-arid and blue is humid):

january_humidity.gif - january

july_humidity.gif - july

This definitely changes things, but the process to work it out is still blurry in my head. So far, my only plan is a huge table, covering all possible combinations - not ideal.

[Azélor]

Something is wrong, because it's pretty dry compared to Africa or South America. They should have similar climates.

[Pixie]

I'll try two changes and share the result:

1. making coastal rains get further inland where possible, recalculate rain patterns and on from there

2. trying a little lower threshold for "arid" seasons and see how that works

Anyhow, as we discussed before, this particular continent has serious mountain ranges blocking nearly all westward winds coming from the ocean and that should have significant effects, so maybe it is just what it is.

[lishamatish]

Just wanted to pop in and say thank you so much for the tutorial
I thought maybe I was going crazy wanting to get into so much detail and poring over atlases and encyclopaedias was sending me a bit loopy so I really appreciate the information here!

[Naima]

Can I follow this tutorial or was it changed ?