Climatology geniuses - To arms!

@Tonguez: Thanks for the "Makatea" bit :).

You can find the cold ocean currents on the gif in my last post. Cold doesn't mean that the water carries icebergs :D. It does only mean that the water is colder than the night temperatures in that region. Therefore, the rain goes down on the ocean, not on land, resulting in a desert.

If you have a look at the Pic in my post you can see that typical deserts are situated next to the cold streams: West Australia, Namib and Atacama on the southern hemisphere, California/Mexico and the western Sahara on the northern.

Anyway, in the temperature drop example given by Snoweel, there wouldn't be many islands left, but rather a compact landmass. With the ocean surface drastically reduced, the climate would be generally much dryer.
 
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Just FYI, this is what the area around Indonesia would look like with a 300 foot drop in ocean levels :)

Edit trying to shrink the picture
 
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It's quite true the oceans would drop 300 feet, in our world.
In Snoweel's campaign world, I cannot say.

Even given the drop shown above, you still have a relatively small landmass at the equator, attached to Australia at one point and to southeast Asia at another point.
Perhaps in Snoweel's world, the archipelago would remain just that, with only a few of the islands merging together.

Strictly speaking, if I were an inhabitant of Snoweel's world, I would prefer to remain on said archipelago at the equator.
For AWAY from the equator, with a 15 to 20 degree Fahrenheit drop, the climate is going to be downright disagreeable.

Someone above mentioned that his car and Scandinavia are going to make Antarctica habitable again.
Perhaps.
It should be noted that if the great East Antarctic Ice Sheet melts (and this would have to happen, before Antarctica would be anything remotely close to what we would call habitable), the seas will rise 200 feet.
You can add another 20 feet for the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
You can add another 3 feet for the loss of the Greenlandic Ice Cap.
And finally, you can add about 250 feet from thermal expansion of the now much warmer oceans.

Therefore, the oceans will be 500 feet higher.
The Earth will be about 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today.
Scandinavia will still be around.
Much of Europe won't be.

Fortunately, it will take thousands of years for Antarctica to melt, even given the most massive, quickest warming scenarios postulated by scientists.
 

I second that the conclusions from the climate change are not that simple. The existence of Europe as a place to live solely depends on the gulf stream. Rome is as far north as New York, whereas Stockholm can be compared to Churchill on the northern Hudson Bay (this famous ice bear town :D). The cold East Greenland stream seams to stop due to the climate change. If this causes the northern branch of the gulf stream to stop as well, Northern Europe will be buried beneath ice - despite the common warming.
 


Not if the arctic ocean is free of ice, Europe will not.

Greenland will remain frozen long after the arctic has cleared of ice.
Cold air roaring off of the Greenland Icecap will continue to produce the sinking of dense, cold saltwater to the bottom of the ocean, which in turn will draw in warmer water from elsewhere.
This will cause the great Conveyor Belt to continue moving, even if the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Drift have changed their patterns, so vast amounts of warm water will continue to flow into the arctic ocean.

The arctic ocean will warm rapidly once the ice is gone.
Very quickly, there will be no ice in this ocean during the winter, except along the coasts of Greenland.
The relatively warm water of the Arctic Ocean will warm the air above it, and this air will fill with moisture evaporated off of the water below.
Moist, cool air masses will flow into Siberia from the northwest, greatly warming Siberia and preventing the rapid drop of temperature that normally occurs over the great continental landmass in the winter.
If the temperature drops anyways, somehow, relatively warm air masses off of the Arctic Ocean will warm the air back up.

In Europe, great warm air masses will ride up out of the west, off of the warm ocean.
The ocean will be warm. Quite warm. There will be nothing to cool it.
No frigid arctic air masses will come roaring off of the icecap to chill the North Atlantic, because there is no icecap and the Arctic Ocean is relatively warm.
Cold air coming off of Greenland will not be sufficient to accomplish much of anything, and there will be no back-moving masses of Siberian cold washing over the Urals and into Europe, and thus out to sea.

Because the arctic is not cold, the Jet Stream will be much farther north than it is today.
Warm air out of Africa and the subtropics will push relentlessly north into Europe, and when this air hits the westerlies, it will produce rain and not snow over the Continent.

Because there is such an abundance of warm air, it will not snow in Europe south of Scandinavia.
Because there is no snow cover, it will become even warmer.
The ground will not freeze, and thus there will be no cold feedback from such a freezing.

Warm moist air off of the Atlantic, and cool moist air off of the Arctic, in combination with warm dry air from the subtropics, will produce heavy cloud cover over Europe during the winter.
Clouds hold in heat, and persistent cloud cover will thus cause the climate to warm even further.

- - -

A note on Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, on the shores of Hudson Bay.
Currently, Hudson Bay starts to freeze over in November, freezes entirely over in December, begins to thaw out in June, and totally thaws out in July.
Churchill is right on the coast, and sea breezes carry the chill air from the bay through the town the year around. Since the normal water temperature of the Bay is in the 30s during it's ice-free period, this breeze is always cold.
Trees will not grow in Churchill, or anywhere along the coast of Hudson Bay, for this reason.

Scientists believe Hudson Bay is for a big warmup.
They expect that in 50 years, the Bay will be free of heavy pack ice the year around, and will have ice - ice, period - only during the winter months.
If this happens, Churchill may become a major seaport.

I must admit, though, that the predictions are hard to believe.
Oak and maple trees flourishing along the shores of the Bay.
The Bay warm enough to swim in (if you are hardy) during the summer.
Wheat growing around James Bay in the far south.
That would be quite a change from today (only the hardiest of stunted spruce trees can hope to survive around even James Bay today, and there is no frost free season.)
 
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Holy Chronosome, mother of Eric!!!!

You guys are unbelievable. Edena, I'm in awe.

I'll give my reasons for why I want my campaign map to look the way I want it to look:

Basically, it comes down to limiting northern- and southern-expansion of humans from the equator. As well as making "temperate" the warmest climate available on my world. This is to justify why characters are able to walk around in heavy armour without succumbing to heatstroke and exhasution.

Plus, I've got loads of maps of Indonesia, right down to maps of each individual island, and I think such an archipelago would be great for a campaign setting, especially since I don't have to draw any maps. Of course I've spun the map 180 degrees, and hope my PC's don't notice. :)

Going on the (admittedly simplistic) assumption in the 2e Worldbuilder's guidebook that the world is divided into 9 climate bands - tropical, and 2 each of sub-tropical, temperate, sub-arctic and arctic, as well as the premise that lowering the temperature of the world 2 climate bands leads to an "inward movement" of the bands, I came up with what I've got.

And as for how I can get a desert, I'm thinking to the future with regard to some cataclysm(tm) could change the rainfall/vegetation of the archipelago.

Can you guys dumb it down for me? Is it possible for the archipelago to be extremely dry at one point in time, as well as extremely wet at another, without coastline changes to the map?

I'd like to avoid "because it's magic" as an explanation, but if I have to resort to it, I will.

Thanks.

You bunch of brainiacal freaks.
 

@Edena: I totally agree with you on your scenario of global warming. I hope it will take some time till my next seaside swimming holiday will go to the lovely shores of Churchill :D.
Anyway, I think we have to consider different time patterns. As far as I know, the East Greenland Stream has come to a halt, which resulted in a massive warming of the ocean east of Greenland. The fish species have changed, etc. As this is one of the driving forces of the northern branch of the Gulf Stream (the now warm water next to Greenland doesn't sink to the ground any more), this might have rapid effects on the Gulf Stream. The development of an ice cap over Scandinavia should take only 3 to 10 years, which is much faster than the proposed effects of global warming. Even if it were only an intermediate stage, it would be dangerous nevertheless.

@Snoweel: Think of El Ninjo effects, which is more or less a disturbance of the equatorial countercurrent. These are very rapid effects, large changes in local water temperatures and, therefore, large changes in local rainfall.
 
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There is no rule that a campaign world must conform to the physics of climate as we know them here on Earth (for that matter, who says we know them here on Earth IRL? The Weather Service is only right half the time about the weather forecast for tomorrow.)
If your world does not conform to our climate physics, that does not mean magic is necessarily the culprit in the different climate ... perhaps, the climate is what it is, and nobody knows why.

Remember that the concept of Warm Fronts and Cold Fronts, High Pressure and Low Pressure, were 20th Century inventions.
The Horse Latitudes were discovered by mariners during the Renaissance, because in the becalmed conditions the men on board went hungry and ate their horses to survive (or threw them overboard, one of the two. At least, this is the fable I've heard!)
The Doldrums, that area of constantly rainy weather that fluctuates back and forth across the Equator, was also discovered during the Renaissance.

(Yes, the native peoples in the tropics knew all about both of the above since time immemorial. I am referring to the Europeans here.)

The Jet Stream was discovered during World War II by bomber pilots who discovered themselves barely moving when at full power, or flying along at far greater speeds than they had expected.
The Circumpolar Vortex and other climatic things of this sort were discovered and named in the latter 20th century.

So, if the people of your medieval world speak in terms of warm fronts and high pressure, the jet stream and doldrums, polar vortexes and horse latitudes, they are unlike the Europeans of old!

- - -

Here is an example of a popular world that has a very un-Earthlike climate: Darkover.
On Darkover, the climate is a variant of arctic.
During the summer, temperatures warm up during the day into the comfortable range - perhaps turning even hot - then drop quickly at night to well below freezing.
Sometimes it will rain during the day, with the rain turning to snow during the short night.
Sometimes, it will turn unusually warm, and nighttime temperatures will stay above freezing - when this happens, watch out, for some of Darkover's more exotic plants come out and bloom.
And sometimes, raging blizzards and frigid temperatures occur, even during the day.
Winter is COLD. Even at sea level, even near the equator. By cold, I mean Siberian cold. Unrelenting, monstrous cold.
Yet in spite of all this, great forests of frost resistant trees and plants grow on this world, great harvests of adapted plants are reaped, and large numbers of humans live here.

Another place with a vast temperate climate is Tolkien's world, Middle Earth.
The temperate range is truly huge. The Shire has a temperate clime, and so does Gondor. The Iron Hills are temperate, and so is Mordor (well, at least, those places in Mordor where climate means anything.)

- - -

It is my opinion, for what it is worth, that a world in a mild to moderate ice age could have vast temperate regions and few tropical regions.
Why? It is rather simple, really.
The large icecaps in both hemispheres - and there will be, obviously, large icecaps in an ice age - are very cold.

In Antartica today, in the real world, temperatures in the interior are below zero even in the summer, and can drop to 50 below zero.
During the winter, temperatures range from 30 to 100 below zero.

Now, if you have large Antarctica-like icecaps in both hemispheres, cold air will flood down out of them towards the equator, the year around.
During the summer, the sun and warmer seas will mitigate this cold enough to allow a summer to occur, with growing seasons and trees leafing out and so on.
But during the winter, the blasts from the incredibly cold icecaps will not be mitigated by the sun, and will only moderate once they have penetrated deep into the warm oceans near the equator.
Thus, the hemisphere in winter will be cold clear down to about 10 degrees from the equator, especially over land.
At the equator, a cold ocean and chill breezes will produce a constantly cool climate, never really becoming cold, but also never really becoming warm either.

- - -

Perhaps your world has a much greater axle tilt than Earth.
I created a version of Krynn that had an axle tilt of 80 degrees.
This means that, during the southern summer, the sun shone all the time, and during the southern winter, the sun did not shine at all anywhere south of 10 degrees south (just south of the equator.)
Furthermore, Krynn was closer to it's sun during the southern summer, so the constant overhead sun was truly scorching in it's intensity.
During the southern winter, Krynn was much farther from it's sun.

As a result, the Krynn I created had an extreme climate in the southern hemisphere, where during the constantly sunlit summer the temperature rose to 200 degrees far inland, and during the dark winter it dropped to 100 below zero far inland.
At the equator, the climate was roughly temperate, with the hot season during the southern summer, and chilly (cold over land) conditions during the southern winter.
In the northern hemisphere, the weak, constant summer sun produced a pleasant, cool summer, while during the long winter night warm air-masses roaring up from the equator produced hurricanes, heavy cloud cover, torrents of rain - it was warmer in the northern hemisphere during the lightless winter than it was during the everlit summer!!!

- - -

Any world that has a high axle tilt (say, 35 degrees, for instance) will probably have large temperate zones.
As the sun rises high in the sky, and beams down on the polar regions, the whole hemisphere warms up, and it is summerlike even at high latitudes.
As the sun goes down, and is scarcely seen, during the winter, all the land masses cool, the oceans chill, winter takes over over most of the hemisphere, and chill winds roar towards and across the equator.
 

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