Worldbuilding Wednesdays: Broad Climatology

Welcome to Worldbuilding Wednesdays!  Every Wednesday, we spend what is probably far too much time walking through our worldbuilding process.  In this week's post, we apply the weather to our map.

What We Have So Far

This section has started getting long, so we're going to focus on those parts that apply to the week's work.  The big things are that we've established most plants are at least twice the size of Earth plants; the weather can be roughly divided into "wet" and "not quite as wet" seasons; and the continent we're looking at bears an uncanny topographic resemblance to Australia if someone carved the Mediterranean Sea into it.

We also said we'd talk about climates today, and we wouldn't want to be liars, would we?

Climates and Climate Zones

It's definition time!

  Climate.  Long term weather patterns, especially in regards to specific regions.

  Climate Zones.  Regions with specific climate characteristics.  It's similar to "climates," but with the addition of vegetation.

It helps to think of climate zones as a subclass of climates.  We can differentiate further, but as you're going to see shortly, it isn't typically necessary.

On our world, we're going to have four basic climates:  Tropical, Temperate, Arid, and Highland.

  Tropical.  The "default" climate.  Warm, consistent temperatures, ample rainfall.  All the previous descriptions of the weather can be assumed to discuss this climate in particular.

  Temperate.  In the extreme north and south, especially in polar regions, temperatures will vary more than elsewhere.  On this planet, it probably won't be enough for snow by itself, but you might actually need a coat on chilly days.  In addition, the Blanket (the global rainstorm that determines the seasons) will miss these regions, so there will be less rainfall in general.

  Arid.  On this planet, "arid" is a figure of speech, but dry areas will occur.  They'll mostly spring up in "rain shadows"- prevailing winds carry the rain in one direction, it'll eventually be pushed into mountain ranges, and the clouds will dump all that excess rain as they rise over the mountains... meaning that the other side of the mountains will be drier, in turn.  Since water is such a great heat sink, its absence means the drier areas will be warmer.  True deserts will be rare but not unheard of.

  Highland.  About 1 degree Celsius of temperature change will be experienced for every kilometer you rise.  The average annual temperature for all points above 16 km will be below freezing, meaning snow will be the norm.  You'd think 16 km altitudes would be unheard of, since even Mount Everest is only 9 km up, but you have to remember:  thanks to gravity and surface area, everything is bigger here.  In fact, due to slower winds and the reduced terminal velocity of the raindrops, erosion will be less of an issue here.  Dramatic spikes skyward will take longer to be worn down to rolling hills.  All that to say that, based on Australia's topography, we can safely assume the tallest point on this continent is more than 22 kilometers up, and definitely has a snowy cap.

Climate zones aren't so clear-cut.  You can, if you wish, break down climates into zones according to topography, precipitation levels, level of plant growth, average temperature, and relative proximity to the coast.  There isn't really a hard and fast rule for deciding how to chop climates up into zones, beyond noting the areas that you're interested in.

We took that last bit more or less literally.  What follows is a selection of climate zones that seem interesting to us.

  Fog-belt Hyperforests.  It's been mentioned before that fog will be a daily facet near the coasts, and by "near" we mean "within a few hundred kilometers."  All that extra wet, with micronutrients carried on the winds, will eventually sink into watersheds and make their way back to the sea.  Where they touch down will be ultra-fertile and conducive to creating forests with trees on the high end of possible size.  The largest forests will create their own foggy conditions as they need to evaporate condensation to transport nutrients throughout the giant trees.  The result is that there will be "patches," potentially 10,000 square kilometers or larger, of jaw-droppingly large trees, eternally shrouded up to the base of their massive branches by thick blankets of fog.

  Wet-Mat Escarpments.  Crawling plants will have an easier time than ever making it up steep slopes and such.  Combined with the capacity for even "small" rises to serve as miniature rain shadows, we can expect to see most plateaus and similar cliff faces coated in mats of vegetation.  In fact, the only places that won't become overgrown with time will be those spots that don't get a lot of rainfall, or do, thanks to the terrain, experience abnormally strong winds.  Narrow canyons, for example.

  Leeward Megasavannas.    Remember, we mentioned that the arid spots wouldn't be deserts?  Less moisture + slightly warmer + still enough water for plants = savannas, broad swaths where vegetation alternates between broad, bushy trees and shorter grass-like plants.  Visually speaking, savannas on this world will resemble Earth's savannas, though individual plants will be larger.  More importantly, this is going to be a great place to explore the weird animals that occupy our world later.

  Stilt-Root Estuaries.  Thanks to the combination of larger tides and (10 times taller, 100 times the area) flatter terrain, the ground covered by brackish water at least part of the time will be huge.  Plants that can endure the constant wet will be common, but more visually striking will be those plants that take advantage of the low gravity and the adaptations found in mangroves.  For example, trees with stilt-roots, creating a space between the trunk and the ground for the water to flow through, will be common in this climate zone.  On this world, those stilt roots could easily be 100 to 150 feet tall.  Imagine walking through a tidal flat, with the entire forest above you.

  Cloud Forest Belts.  Cloud forests- forests that are basically always wet, raining or foggy- will be quite common on this world.  An interesting side effect of the extreme verticality of the plant life, however, is that there can be multiple layers of canopies and growth.  A tree growing some 500 meters tall is more than large enough to support even normal (for Earth) sized trees growing on its branches.  Coupled with the above, it is entirely possible that there is an entire, smaller forest growing between the ground and the distant canopies above.  They would even provide a much-needed service by generating the moisture required for the larger tree's continued growth.

  Kelp Islands.  On our world, kelp could easily grow hundreds of meters long.  Kelp forests could be topped with dense mats of vegetation... mats thick enough to support other objects.  As with the cloud forest belts, it's possible plants could adapt to grow atop the kelp, creating vegetation islands in calmer seas.

Best Climatology Practices

When building a world of your own, don't be afraid to get at least a little specific.  You don't have to focus on unique locations at this point in the game; you just have to adapt the very skills we've been working on all along to the concept of climate zones.

By that, we mean:  treat each interaction of your map with the climate as an opportunity to explore consequences.  It's safe to assume the same combination of climate, topography, and plant life will create the same kind of climate zone, so once you have several climate zones, you can place them on your map.  On our map, hyperforests will line valleys and the windward side of mountain ranges, while megasavannas will proliferate on the other side of the mountain ranges, just for example.

You can, by all means, fill out your entire map in this fashion.  Don't feel obligated to do so, however.  Find the level of detail that works for your goals.  Beyond that, assume the basics:  forests, grasslands, mountains and, if you're going to have civilizations on your world, maybe farmlands.

Conclusion

At this point, we can paint our map in broad strokes.  We can color in specific patches in brighter hues, as well.  We can identify areas that will have interesting combinations of climate and vegetation.

And with these ideas, we now have places for animals to live.  Which means it's time to start considering what animals will look like as they bound across the megasavannas and scale the trees.  There's a lot to work with, so we'll tackle this particular task in parts.  Next week, we'll start with Creatures of the Air.

Until then, happy worldbuilding!