Climate and biomes

[isomage]

I'd like to do some planetary-scale random map generation, with a plausible climate model, biomes, etc. I can generate reasonable elevation, temperature, and rainfall data, but I haven't found any decent information online about how to compute specific biomes as a function of those data.

Have any of you done any climate and biome modelling for your world maps, or do you know of any good resources for this kind of thing?

[Karro]

Well, climate changes a lot based heavily on both Latitude and Altitude.

In this thread I've been working on my own world map, I ran through these sorts of issues. I built a very basic climate ladder for my map based on coriolis/wind effects at various latitudes. I learned that areas are drier or wetter in part whether the wind was carrying moisture (from a body of water) into an area or away from an area.

And here is a tutorial with some info on tectonics (which affect mountain placement, which in turn affect cliamte) and in that thread is a link (here) to a free pdf download from Expeditious Retreat Press that has a pretty decent Climate primer contained in it.

Additional links: here

And another search of the forum on "Climate" will probably yield additional results!

[covatex]

Try this link: http://www.compulink.co.uk/~morven/w...t/climate.html.

In this thread http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3568 I'm doing something like it.

First I take a height map and calculate a temperature map (using latitudes and elevation)
Then I calculate pressures (in function of latitudes, temperatures and year date). With pressures I can get wind directions and wind speeds. Then I "evaporate" certain ammount of humidity (in function presure, temperature, soil saturation and wind speed) and transport it along the winds. If the conditions of humidity and temperature are met, some rain (or snow) falls incrementing the soil saturation value.
If you have heights, temperatures and humidity, the biomes are a piece of cake!

[Arkkeeper]

Also soon I'll be doing my Climate, Biome, and such Overlays for my ArkEarth Atlas. Here's a link if you'd like to see how I do it. Now granted I do all my stuff by hand so it will probably be very different.

Atlas Of ArkEarth

[Greason Wolfe]

Not sure if this will be of any help or not, but it might be worth a look

http://www.runet.edu/~swoodwar/CLASS...omes/main.html

It doesn't appear to cover all the biomes and/or climate types, but it may be a good starting point to extrapolate from.