The other approach is just to create a world and write the story to fit it, computer generation is your friend there, since it will work out everything for you.Īssuming an earth like planet, two things decide climate continental position and average temprature, everything else gets derived from those two things. But if you get too detailed you will end up having to change things. You can set out some rough guidelines (I need a bunch of islands and a big desert on the same continent as some quality farmland) and then work from there, figuring out what you need to get it. Or how changes in the water temperature in the oceans could cause winds to change along the equator and therefor cause el niño like conditions of local draughts or floodings. f.ex how heat in the summer can cause heavy rain like monsoons on an anual basis. It also makes it possible to know little bits of everyday knowledge about what it is like to live there, like for instance, what direction the wind usually blows from and whether it brings hot or cold weather when the wind changes.Īdditional things to consider is how wether changes throughout the year and what this means for climate and living conditions.
It decreases the risk of suddenly having an area of land with a climate that doesn't make sense. I much prefer this bottom up process because it ensures that there is a coherence to the planet. In relation to this you can also think about ice ages and where glaciers might have scoured the mountains and rockfaces. When you considder the movement of moisture over time it will be possible to have ideas about what sorts of landscapes would form under those conditions. When you combine this with how hotter air carrying moisture is meeting colder air or mountains you will see where it gets more or less rainy. When you know where warm and cold water currents are moving it will be easier to see which zones will be warmer or colder on land. There should be models online for how ocean and wind move when they are unhindered. When you have land and mountains you look at how the land and mountains interfere witht he ocean and wind currents. Plate teutonics will also tell you where there might be vulcanoes and hot springs. It will also indicate where there will be different rock types and different soil types.
The way I did it for my world building was I started with the continental plates and how they had been moving in relation to each other, this movement decides where land and mountains will be. A vast tundra at sea level near the equator is equally wrong. Lush rain forests in the rain shadow of mountains is flat wrong. Making believable climates rests on getting your water cycle and latitudes right. For example, what's the difference between the Sahara and the Gobi deserts? Find every example of that terrain type and compare them. Picks a climate type, desert, rain forest, savanna, tundra, which ever you like. Select a few points and repeat this process. Look up maps of prevailing winds (a brief Google search turns up hundreds of such maps) and find any mountain ranges between the selected point and the nearest ocean in the direction against the prevailing wind. Pick a random point over land and look up the climate at that location. Get a big map of Earth or open Google Earth. Here's a few ideas that may help you explore our planet and make your own more believable. There are some interesting world generation programs/websites out there that allow a user to explore the interplay of plate tectonics, trade winds, ocean mass and a few other factors.Īs you have noticed, getting climates right is hard and takes a lot of study.
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