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<blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 2338744" data-attributes="member: 10201">More radical weather, in all seasons. Large masses of water have much greater thermal mass than large masses of land, and thus cut down on rapid/large weather changes. It's why Boston and Seattle have much less seasonal variation than Milwaukee &amp; Minneapolis (respectively), despite being at similar latitudes. Take away the oceans, and both climate and weather change more rapidly and have greater extremes. Also, the day-night temperature variation would probably be greater, just like in Earth deserts--less humidity to mollify the change.&nbsp;The variance on the distance from the sun to the ground due to tilt is essentially zero. The important parts are the change in angle of incidence (same amount of energy spread over more area), and amount of atmosphere traveled through.&nbsp;&nbsp;Strictly speaking, yes. But in the real world, it gets more complicated: Earth's axial tilt produces &quot;differences&quot; that are orders of magnitude greater than those produced by its minimal eccentricity. It's probably most accurate to say that both axial tilt and orbital eccentricity contribute to the formation of seasons, and the magnitudes vary. But it's gonna take a lot of eccentricity to equal a fairly moderate amount of tilt. Earth's tilt means that the angle of incidence of sunlight in the temperate zones shifts from, say, 20deg to 65deg from summer to winter. That's gonna cut the energy content by, what, 60% [ballpark calculation]. To duplicate that level of change with just eccentricity, you'd need to have the planet be ~1.6x as far away in winter as summer, or an eccentricity of 0.27. Pluto's eccentricity is 0.24, and the Earth's is 0.0167.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="woodelf, post: 2338744, member: 10201"] More radical weather, in all seasons. Large masses of water have much greater thermal mass than large masses of land, and thus cut down on rapid/large weather changes. It's why Boston and Seattle have much less seasonal variation than Milwaukee & Minneapolis (respectively), despite being at similar latitudes. Take away the oceans, and both climate and weather change more rapidly and have greater extremes. Also, the day-night temperature variation would probably be greater, just like in Earth deserts--less humidity to mollify the change. The variance on the distance from the sun to the ground due to tilt is essentially zero. The important parts are the change in angle of incidence (same amount of energy spread over more area), and amount of atmosphere traveled through. Strictly speaking, yes. But in the real world, it gets more complicated: Earth's axial tilt produces "differences" that are orders of magnitude greater than those produced by its minimal eccentricity. It's probably most accurate to say that both axial tilt and orbital eccentricity contribute to the formation of seasons, and the magnitudes vary. But it's gonna take a lot of eccentricity to equal a fairly moderate amount of tilt. Earth's tilt means that the angle of incidence of sunlight in the temperate zones shifts from, say, 20deg to 65deg from summer to winter. That's gonna cut the energy content by, what, 60% [ballpark calculation]. To duplicate that level of change with just eccentricity, you'd need to have the planet be ~1.6x as far away in winter as summer, or an eccentricity of 0.27. Pluto's eccentricity is 0.24, and the Earth's is 0.0167. [/QUOTE]

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