Precipitation - Worldbuilder’s Log 31

[@rossbaygeo]

Hi Edgar, I'm a geographer and I thought that I could help with your moisture problem @24:50. You definitely boxed yourself in with those mountains! The region will be quite dry but it looks like a rich watershed would drain into the bay. Your bay would cause "sea-effect" precipitation. A "fetch" (or distance air travels over water) of at least 100 km is usually required to produce lake- or sea-effect precipitation, which can fall as far as 200 km away. However, larger inland or enclosed seas provide more moisture: e.g. the Mediterranean Sea regularly transports 400-600 mm of rain during the winter over 1,000 km away to the Zargos Mountains and the "American Mediterranean Sea" comprised of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea contributes significant moisture to the Great Plains, and even the Eastern Woodlands over 1,000 km away. If you are looking for rules of thumb, I would propose up to a maximum 1,000 km downwind would be a good distance for 'wet' marking given a large enough inland basin. I would privilege distance from the deeper eastern basin, and be more conservative for the impact of the shallow western basin of the bay, especially where the fetch is less than 100 km. I think an understandable weakness of the guide you are using for your world-building is the lack of low pressure areas beyond the ITCZ (I believe the fronts are a way to solve this problem). During the summer, I suspect a thermal low would form on the continent, similar to the Chaco Low in South America or Mexican Low in North America (this is modelled decently with the northernly bump in the ITCZ). This low could extend north to the plateau because large, dry mountain-ranges and plateaus like the Himalayan Mountains and Tibetan Plateau in Asia magnify existing thermal lows. Marginal seas contribute to precipitation patterns and shallow bodies of water can warm quickly in the summer compared to neighbouring oceans. The resulting low pressure area over the plateau would draw moisture from the ocean and the warm bay with counter-clockwise south-easterly and easterly winds in the summer and early autumn. This Plateau Low would weaken and eventually be replaced by the Plateau High during the northern hemisphere's winter. A low pressure system would reliably form off the north-east coast of that continent in the winter, which could pull moisture from the bay with north-westerly to south-westerly winds (similar to how the lows over Newfoundland cause lake-effect precipitation from the Great Lakes). Furthermore, north-westerly winds and low pressure systems like Alberta Clippers originating on the lee side of the plateau in the winter could cause sudden storms around the bay. The bay itself could produce mesoscale convective systems and cyclones that contribute to precipitation as well. If the bay freezes over at any point, then precipitation would decrease. Depending on the temperatures, you would have a diversity of Temperate and/or Continental climates with seasonal precipitation in the winter, summer or all year around the bay. I hope this helps!

[@Artifexian]

Hi Ross, Great info! Thank a mill. Any chance you'd be able to email me (my address in on the about section on my channel page), I'd love to pick your brains a little more.

[@Shrooblord]

What an awesome reply. Thank you so much, Ross

[@javierhillier4252]

that's super informative, not sure if you'll see this but I'm trying to map but not sure if you put precipitation on coasts that have an onshore wind with a a cold current or not

[@rossbaygeo]

@@javierhillier4252 Thank you! Yes, you would add precipitation on coasts with an onshore wind over a cold current.

[@javierhillier4252]

@@rossbaygeo thx that was confusing me but I guess if there’s a high pressure over that cold current the air would be too dry for any noticeable amount of precipitation to form over land or can there still be for that too

[@Piggywhiff]

I think you've severely underestimated the effects of the gulfs and bays on precipitation. In North America, anywhere downwind of the Great Lakes will get enormous amounts of winter precipitation because the wind picks up lots of moisture from the (relatively) warm bodies of water then immediately deposits it over the (relatively) cold land. The North American Great Lakes are relatively small, and I imagine that effect would be much larger across larger bodies of water. Additionally, because the Gulf of Mexico is next to the warm Gulf Stream current, it is full of warm water, so winds that travel over it pick up lots of moisture and then deposit that moisture inland when they encounter cold fronts from the North. These two effects (well, mostly the onshore winds from the Gulf) make the eastern United States a wet zone, while I think your methodology would've made it dry. I think that might be why Artifexia seems too dry. For the purpose of rainfall, "the coast" should be where the water meets the land, not where the deep ocean meets the continental shelf. Any gulfs, bays, or shallow seas should be considered the same temperature as the dominant current flowing across or into them. And, while I'm not confident on this one, I suspect that any large lakes or inland seas would be considered "warm" in the winter and "cold" in the summer, because water heats up and cools down slower than land, and that would produce winter "lake effect" precipitation.

[@Skip6235]

I’m not a climate scientist by any means, but also I would think that this world looks a little too dry due to sublimation from plants, too. In the massive forests and plains on earth, plants release moisture into the air, and especially in summer it can be enough to drive massive supercell thunderstorms in the unstable air over the Great Plains in the US

[@lukefriederichsen]

Absolutely, in fact this same effect goes for the Mediterranean sea as well. Without it, the lows that ride the polar front/jet stream would quickly lose their source of warm, moist air, and we wouldn't get our moderate winter precipitation as far inland as we see in western Eurasia.

[@solomon4554]

I agree. It should also be noted that the Sea of Japan creates some of the highest snowfalls in the world on Japan's western coast during winter, even though it's an almost closed sea.

[@heathercampbell6059]

I used to live by the Great Salt lake, and we would still get a lake effect. it is significantly smaller than the Great Lakes. So I completely agree with you.

[@theorixlux]

That's true but he is worried because the wind blows out to sea. He should've added the wet zone to 1000km

[@SybilantSquid]

Not an expert, just an amateur, but I recommend you include the bays, gulfs, and lakes in your calculations. Depth is less important than surface area and surface temperature. Larger surface areas and higher surface temperatures would allow a higher volume of water transfer. Take the Gulf of Mexico for example. Thanks to it, rain can reach far deeper into the North American interior than the continental shelf alone would allow.

[@ColinPaddock]

True. In addition, shallower water will tend to get higher surface temperatures in the hot season and lower surface temperatures in the cold season. I’m not sure what the cutoff is for “shallow,” but this seems to hold for the Mediterranean and Gulf of Mexico which aren’t exactly kiddy pools. In effect, I’d use Edgar’s process for winter hemisphere and maybe push wet regions a little further ashore than expected for warm deep sea in summer.

[@HopkinsViorel]

Yes, I think this would help to add moisture to the planet. Though the southern continent should keep pretty dry, I guess; considering Antarctica is technically a desert.

[@JustNierninwa]

The Mediterranean is actually quite deep (1500 metres on agerage, slightly over 5000 metres at its deepest). I'm no expert on the Gulf of Mexico, but you do still get the semi-arid climate of Southern Texas / Northeastern Mexico. As for lakes, well, arguably between a lake and a sea but the Caspian sure doesn't help its surroundings gain moisture (look at Kazakhstan). And it's also not *that* shallow.

[@HopkinsViorel]

@@JustNierninwa Wikipedia has a nice article about rain shadow, which includes a list of places where this happens. Funnily enough, it appears to suggest that the Caspian Sea could moist Iran, but it doesn't because of rain shadow itself (check the picture next to the 'western asia' section). Down below, in the 'North American mainland' section, it points out that the Sierra Madre Occidental is to the west of the Chihuahuan desert, so rain shadow could explain some of Mexico's aridity as well. This seems to suggest that even shallow seas could have a noticeable moisturizing effect if big enough. I don't know how accurate any of these information is, though; but to be fair, climate modelling is really hard, even specialized GCM programs won't be 100% accurate, so we really shouldn't worry about being so precise here. In any case, the list presented bellow could help to give us an idea of where rain shadows could happen en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_shadow

[@Jessie_Helms]

I finally made my original world and thinking back to your videos helped A LOT with making the geography make sense. Logical geography makes for easy society building.

[@CoolestDude853]

Never been this early to an artifexian video before! Keep up the good work!

[@terdragontra8900]

16:42 you should make a note of that region, sounds to me like it will have quite dry summers some years and quite wet other years, which could be interesting for biology and culture and whatnot.

[@thinwhitemook8314]

I do love this method of taking the various wind patterns into effect and layering up precipitation rather than just following a basic climate map without really knowing why. Also, parroting some others, living next to the smallest of the great lakes in one of the snowiest cities in the country has me biased, so perhaps this seasonal precipitation dump is rarer than I think, but I do think lake effect is worth looking at.

[@dayalasingh5853]

Been a while since the last one, excited to watch this one, seems very interesting.

[@gentleshark972]

Other aspects you should considee: Vegetation is an incredibly impactfull aspect in precipitation and can entirely make up the rain of inland systems. For example: The marshes of Sudan provides a lot of the water that falls in the sahel, and the tropical rainforest recycles up to 80% of its water, evaporating and precipitation continouesly, making deep inland forests possible. Tropics are almost always very wet because they work on recycled water for the most parts, and lots of regions of the world are arid but not a desert. As a rzsult 2 reccomendations: 1. Maybe also have arid besides dry, for differentiating savanna´s and grasslands from deserts. 2. Once you do biomes, maybe rethink how precipitation works. Having zones maybe be more wet downstream from forestes areas. 3. There can be smaller arid regions within humid ones, like around those lakes betwene the coastil humid area and the mountains.

[@Writer-Two]

This was pretty cool I hadn't put much thought into this before

[@ShayminLover492]

When you get into climate zones and biomes, there's actually a few things to consider: Seasonal rainfall variations are often independent from that of the prevailing winds. In the winter, high-pressure zones develop over the interior of continents, which intermesh with the Subtropical Ridge. This leaves low-pressure zones in the oceans. This means you can expect dry winters in the interior of continents, and wet winters on the coast. In the summer, low-pressure zones develop over the interior of continents, which intermesh with the Intertropical Convergence Zone and the Polar Front. This leaves high-pressure zones in the oceans. This means you can expect wet summers in the interior of continents, and dry summers on the coast. In areas with monsoon climates, the pressure differential between land and sea is so large to the point where the resulting winds override the trade winds. As such, you can expect very wet summers (the wet season) and very dry winters (the dry season). In terms of biomes, there's a special type that could come into play: Laurel Forests. Laurel forests, or laurasilva, exist in warm temperate or subtropical regions with mild temperatures and plentiful rainfall year-round, whose vegetation is dominated by laurels and laurophyll plants. Based on these prerequisites, on an Earth-like planet, there are four general locales for laurel forests to exist in: On the eastern fringes of continents between 25-35°N/S On the western coasts of continents between 35-50°N/S On islands between 25-40°N/S And in highland regions in the tropics. This means that those temperate rainforests on the west coasts also have the potential to be laurel forests, perhaps as a mixed Conifer-Laurel forest, which is a very rare sight in the world. Above 50°N/S, the evergreen laurels would disappear as it would be too cold to support them, while below 35°N/S, it would too dry to support them. Sometimes, temperate rainforests could also be coniferous forests (like in the Pacific Northwest), or just simply be mixed woodland. The mild climate would allow many unique species to thrive. Basically the biomes would generally be as such: East Coasts: Tropical Rainforest Subtropical Wet Forest Temperate Broadleaf Forest Taiga Tundra Ice Cap West Coasts: (Tropical Rainforest if rainy enough) Savannah Xeric Shrubland Desert Mediterranean Shrubland/Woodland Temperate Mixed Forest (Temperate Rainforest) Taiga Tundra Ice Cap Inland/Rainshadow: Savannah Xeric Shrubland Desert Grassland Wooded Steppe (Below a certain temperature, precipitation is no longer a defining factor in humidity) Taiga Tundra Ice Cap Of course, it all varies from place to place.

[@throwawayname2766]

While I would advocate making the world a slight bit wetter, keeping it generally more arid than earth could help cut down on the massive effort going to be needed for spec. bio by reducing the number of disparate high diversity ecosystems.

[@throwawayname2766]

I would overall say wetter is better tho

[@dinoscarex4550]

But rainforests with high biodiversity will still exist regardless of land area.

[@Kalithrasis]

High plant diversity ecosystems aren't determined just by precipitation, they are determined by topography, soils, and climate. California is fairly dry over most of its area and has a high level of plant endemism. This is due to its proximity to the ocean, its mostly Mediterranean climate, lots of mountains, and a great number of soil types thanks to it forming out of volcanic arcs, later volcanism, and terrane accretion. Many of the dry forest ecoregions have very high endemism.

[@throwawayname2766]

@@Kalithrasis very true as well

[@throwawayname2766]

the difference is how many (+ not just rainforests) @@dinoscarex4550

[@malusignatius]

Regarding the peninsula and the shifting front: I think what you would end up with is variable and unpredictable rainfall, much like exists in Australia.

[@pierrefrebet5630]

I love your work man ! So inspiring !

[@AlexChec]

16:55 I think what you would have in that case is significant seasonal variability depending on the strength of the high pressure system and polar winds. My gut tells me that in the northern hemisphere summer, the weaker polar high would result in the lower-latitude high pressure system having a stronger effect at higher latitudes (ie, more rain shadow). However, by winter, the effect would reverse. Climate-wise, the region would be (imperfectly) analogous to eastern Türkiye and Armenia, which have very dry summers but wet winters and springs when moisture is able to penetrate from the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

[@iagocasabiellgonzalez7807]

As your world has no circumpolar ocean current and has a quasi-circuntropical current, your world will be quite warm (as seen already in the very small icecaps) and thus much wetter. Think Earth 75 Mya, when the Panama Straight was open and the Cape Horn isthmus was closed, we got no circumpolar current and a huge circumtropical current, with no ice caps and loads of moisture. You still have something like 60% water vs 40% land ratio, you shoud have a way wetter world.

[@iagocasabiellgonzalez7807]

Unless you are colder in the habitable zone of your stellar system, that is.

[@Ksescel]

Perfect timing cause it poured here in ny

[@maxwellsimon4538]

Gotta love the process "Hmm, I think I've overshot things here." "hmm, I don't think there should be this much here..." "Eh, this spot might not get that much, so let's get rid of it" "Wow, my planet looks WAY too dry"

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

14:20 the planet looks like a very perplexed Ninja Turtle

[@blackshard641]

Rick Grimes: "CORAL!! CORAL!!"

[@seho7172]

😁😁😁

[@powdertoyguy]

First 🎉

[@jerryrobinson7414]

So im assuimg we'ill have the actual biology in part 50? If he doesnt spend more time on the planet as if it ever matterd that much

[@pyrania6828]

Wow, entitled much? Biology is based on the geography around you, so you should learn about what you are talking about before you go about telling other people about it.

[@GeheimesT]

He did said that he wants to cover geography, biology and conlanging in this project and that it may take up to 5 years to complete it. And like the comment aboth me said, you net geography so that you know where which biome can form and how life will adapt. But I don't think that it will take not that long. He maby makes one ore two videos about climates, one about rivers and lakes, maby tides, maby resources, and probably one where he will take another look about the planet and tweeks a few factors. Ok maby it will take a while but it will be worth the wait :)

[@TWlaz]

Oh wow I can’t believe Edgar invented rain.

[@Skip6235]

But does he bless them down in Africa?

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

What's rain?

[@TWlaz]

@@Ggdivhjkjl Ehh, don’t worry about it. Unrelated question, do you know where I could buy gopher wood for cheap?

[@metagames.errata7777]

He is older than I am, I so I can neither confirm nor deny.

[@adoge1175]

​@TWlaz Down the road, if you're lucky it only costs a few hundred to make a boat with it or somethibg. If you want em for free just go down to the mountains of Ararat somewhere and you should see a pile of it. Just take one and leave! Simple as that... wait... what do you need the wood for?

[@sachacendra3187]

Reading Worldbuilding Pasta's blog post and following my intuition (that might be very much wrong) I don't understand why precipitations should be influenced by continental shelf. Like western Europe recieve lot of moisture from the atlantic ocean and i don't think the shallow ocean there really influence the strength or am I missing something ? EDIT : Yeah, no, it shouldn't. Im around 8:21 you make the wind stop at 2000km from the deep sea, I really think it should stop at 2000km from the coast. Basically this shallow sea will be very warm all over and act as a warm current influence thus make lands all around it very moist like the South Chinese sea or Gulf of Mexico IRL. EDIT 2: 19:48 I feel like the southern part of this area should be kept since the wind there would have come from this really large bay/Inner sea. Also the front just to the east of this bay would pick up moisture from it most likely (If it's below 2000km away, but it's likely to be especialy the influence).

[@Lilas.Duveteux]

Well, South-East US is humid subtropical and so is Sochi (Russia), Eastern Korea and Western Japan. Florida and Sochi are fed humidity by waters covering continental shelf.

[@dizadaza]

It would be interesting to try this precipitation thing with Earth's map just to see how it all lines up with actual observational data... maybe something will show up and help explain why there's so much dry space on this fantasy map? Or give us some more appreciation for our lil wet rock we call home :)

[@Xedlord]

That would be quite fun

[@VallelYuln]

I tried it in the past. This method tends to lead to worlds that are too dry, especially in tropical areas. For one he should have counted those bays and even large lakes as giving moisture to the air, as they would allow for much more moisture being carried (with bays behaving as the temperature of the current that passes by them). Additionally rainforests can function 'recycle' moist air, allowing for much further carrying of rainfall into continental interiors in the tropics.

[@aerievee]

I think a differentiation between "average precipitation" and "dry" could help make the map less arid

[@altemzwo8390]

Without knowing much about the topic, I'd expect the shallow tropical sea south of Ezri to be extremely warm and thus, evaporate a lot of water even without a warm current, so I'd go much further inland than you did with the wet zone. For Jannar, the shallow sea is outside of the tropics, so presumably less warm with the blocked ocean current. To make it a bit more sciency, you could look at typical temperatures of earth seas and compare that to warm currents to estimate to what extend you should expand the wet zones inland.

[@altemzwo8390]

After thinking about it a bit more, mostly based on Ukraine and Russia around the Black Sea, I'd suggest adding maybe ~ 500km of wet around the Sea in Jannar anyway, where it is in the polar influence thing and the wind blows more or less landwards. I think it's a little bit harder to justify for Northeastern Ezri, because the wind blows in the wrong direction, and as far as I can tell, the Hudson Bay doesn't really do much for Canadas precipitation. Maybe the area south of the bay could be wet during the winter?

[@Bevillia]

Interesting video. This definitely solidifies something I was thinking over the last few videos when looking at the major mountain ranges, which is that its seeming like massive portions of this planet are going to be quite inhospitable towards human-like habitation due to how "fenced-off" major portions of the continents are by large mountain ranges along their edges. I'm definitely interested in seeing how you address that going forward.

[@SKy_the_Thunder]

imo it doesn't make much of a difference for evaporation how deep the water is below the surface. If anything, shallower waters with lesser currents should heat up faster and contribute more moisture than deeper oceans. So at least above a certain average temperature I feel like they should count the same as warm coastal currents, regardless of what their off-shelf current looks like.

[@brysonfetters4934]

Considering that that northern basin is surrounded by tall mountain ranges it does make sense that it is going to be pretty dry haha. I agree with the other commenters though that you really underestimated the precipitation from bays and gulfs which is why the world is so much drier than you would probably expect. Specifically, the eastern rifting continent should be so much due to those back arc seas. The continent next to that Indonesia area should so much wetter as well as winds would pick up lots of moisture off of that inland sea. Like another commenter said, ocean surface area is more important than its depth.

[@kulichkun8709]

My thoughts on the bay - its analogues are Hudson Bay, and the Far Eastern coast of Russia (Sea of Okhotsk and Sea of Japan). For Hudson Bay, the shores with winds in winter and summer do not differ in precipitation from neighboring regions in the interior of the continent (everywhere is quite wet). As for the coast of Siberia, the Asian monsoon prevails there, and in winter the wind is offshore. At the same time, the coast has a difference in precipitation compared to the interior of the continent - in Vladivostok on the coast of the Sea of Japan it is humid enough, but in Harbin, 500 km away, it is already absolutely dry. Okhotsk is also wet in winter when the wind is offshore. But at the same time, this excess winter humidity does not penetrate further than ~200-300 km deep into the continent along the entire coast of Siberia.

[@christopherstefanatos7197]

A good example of small ocean bodies of water between large land masses affecting precipitation would be the Sea of Japan. It drastically increases the rainfall that Japan, Korea and Eastern Siberia get.

[@dropidropsi6107]

i think you should add wet areas when there are onshore winds in bays and gulfs (and maybe closed water bodies?) in the steps of ITCZ, Mid-Latitude Fronts and Polar Front because Worldbuildingpasta uses cold currents as a example, so i think that shallow water also count there Edit: also in the end of climate zones step in Worldbuildingpasta he mentions: -that any desert around 20° (15°~30°) should be extend all the way to the west coast. -the ITCZ will pass through the areas between it’s seasonal extremes (during equinoxes i think?) so areas between 10° N/S should became tropical savanna and tropical monsoon (except for where there are strong rainshadows). it seems Worldbuildingpasta does'nt conserve his precipitation map, so if you want to conserve your map you need to: -eliminate any wet/very wet zone around west coasts at 20° (15°~30°) -create a precipitation map during equinoxe (and also one for ocean currents and winds) to have all the ecuator set wet at least some part of the year. Edit 2: and maybe you should reset the distant of the warm current, orthographic rains and lee cyclogenesis influence when crossing shallow seas.

[@jonathanthomas8736]

I'd say if you have a situation where a front can fluctuate as to sometimes blow winds onshore and into mountains and other times blow onshore from a different direction, it'll probably net out to wet where the rainshadow effect happens no more than half of the time. Reasoning being that intermittent rains would leave water in the ground when the rainshadow kicks in. I might mark these a different color, though, and when it comes time to do climates, bias them a bit toward Steppe or Scrub, except near permanent water sources (rivers, lakes), and definitely skew well away from desert.

[@jonathanthomas8736]

I should note I was just reading worldbuildingpasta's precipitation notes a couple of days ago, so I still have it mostly in mind.

[@wires-sl7gs]

You're being WAY to conservative about this, and like someone else said, Severely underestimating the effects of the gulfs and bays when it comes to precipitation. Said comment was made by Piggywhiff, so please read their comment if you haven't already. And Sure, this planet has a lot of coastal mountains, but can't really buy this world being this dry. If you need to, you should contact worldbuilding pasta and have them take a look and see if there should be more precipitation or not. You should also research what kinds of effects inland seas like the Mediterranean and the Great Lakes have on Precipitation. I do remember hearing that the Great Lakes do have some sort of effect, so you should take that into consideration. And if you're ever willing to go the fantasy route, you could always use fantastical means to justify there being precipitation where there might not otherwise be if you want certain regions to have rain. Also would definitely recommend reading CGabol's and Rossbaygeo's Comments as well if you haven't already

[@wires-sl7gs]

Also would definitely recommend reading CGabol's and Rossbaygeo's Comments as well if you haven't already

[@Kolateak_]

Nothing gets my quite as hyped as seeing a new episode of this in my subscriptions

[@Lilas.Duveteux]

Waters on continental shelf do feed humidity to nearby areas. The Gulf of Mexico delivers rain to places like Florida. The Black Sea and Medittereanean sea feel rains to Lombardia, a small portion of Romania and even the city of Sochi. In North America, the great Lakes provide a lot more humidity to the surrounding land, turning what would have been prairies into lush forest (this portion has relatively off-shore winds). While the zone of influence of these continental-shelf located waters, the effect they have on climate is measureable and noticeable. So, I think any wear near a bay area near a temperate climate should have a thin band of wet. Not very wet, but it should be more humid. So I think the shores of the Bay in the Eastern large continent should get at least a thin band of wet regions, and be dry continental everywere else.

[@draugarnatt3816]

I might be leaning myself a bit out of the window here as I'm not an expert on meteorology or climatology either, but maybe it is as dry because your planet is bigger. If I didn't miss anything, the 2000 km applies well to Earth, but could be a little bit more on a larger planet. Though thinking about it, it probably has less to do with the planet's size and more with atmospheric properties. My rule for shallow seas that are not completely blocked from winds would be to add wet zones which are narrower, but that likely is handwaving it too. Also, as far as I know dry just refers to "non-humid" regions; a lot of it, especially close to wetter zones and at higher latitudes, would likely be steppes rather than deserts.

[@Artifexian]

Yeah, I'm not sure how worldbuildingpasta's guide scales with planet size

[@davidcoquelle3081]

Make it Rain in that bay

[@CGaboL]

8:00 In this one you're really overestimating depth as a factor for how much water can be carried, as it actually doesn't matter as much as surface area, water temperature and air temperature. In an extremely oversimplified way, the more contact there is between two phases (for this case liquid water and gaseous air), the more likely it is for any given water molecule to be carried away (I'm an Industrial Chemical Engineer with a specialty on Environmental Engineering, I tend to think of in these scales when talking about these things so bear with me). While also the higher the temperature of the water the more energy it has to escape the liquid, and the higher the air temperature the more water air can carry. That shallow sea is gonna give so much water that it's going to carry water quite inland that the island chain doesn't take away too much from it. From my experience (which honestly isn't much to speak of), you'd be best overshooting it and using as a hard line of a theoretical maximum which under normal climatological circumstances will never come close to be reached (what we call overdesign), the actual line of where the wet zone ends should be somewhere between there and the coast where the ocean and the land meet, as it seems easier to distinguish too much from too little.

[@WolfWalrus]

I love this series, seeing you building up a world step by step. It's super fascinating seeing the passion for real geography turned into something playful. I've been following for a good long while now and seeing the Artifexia series is really a culmination of all you've done so far. It's marvellous One thing that I wanted to ask about is how you would go about building a world from the "bottom up" rather than from the "top down" -- in many of my _D&D_ games, I start with a town, or a small region, a kingdom, a coastline, and only start to develop the wider world as the players get around to exploring it. As much fun as it is to build worlds for their own sake, it's not a practical use of a Game Master's energy to create a holistic, realistic world that the players might only experience a small chunk of. What would you do in this case? How would you work backwards from something like this and make inferences about what happened in the earlier steps we skipped, and apply that to the whole world?

[@AlexArthur94]

I'm not sure bottom-up worldbuilding is Edgar's area of expertise. However, what I'd suggest is build out your town, and maybe a region. If you are ready to go bigger than that, though, you'll have to at least have a rough world map (even if you don't fill in all the details of nations and history and creatures) and find where the region you've created could fit in that world.

[@sigh8522]

In my experience making maps it is very easy to make it too dry. In addition to what everyone else is saying about bays I recommend being far more generous with rainfall at the itcz. Since the entire area is low pressure, there is basically a band of heavy rain around the itcz. (I recommend looking at global rainfall gifs) The way I do it is have an area extending about 10 degrees from the itcz which is rainy by default. things like mountains, cold currents, and nearby high pressure zones can cause the zone to narrow or the rain to lessen, but wouldn't get rid of it completely. in general it should be rare to have places on the equator ever experience dry weather. in flat, low-lying areas the zone can expand (especially in the interior of continents). Additionally, you can be more generous with zones of moderate rain when blending away from very rainy areas. Unless there's a mountain range there's no reason for the rain to stop so suddenly.

[@galtopel2140]

don't forget that rainforest make their own rain, with out this, the western parts of the Amazonas will be deserts.

[@Yachid]

(?) thiz one doesN't appear 2B in the List (?) Not sure if thiz info~ help'z directly w/ y'r Wind/Water iss~; but, I believe I'd learnt, in Wood-Lot Mgt, that when Wind Crash'z into 'a wall [say a Fence/building/trees/Mtn] of H-height, then the space deVoid of Wind, on the LeeWard-side iz 4H in length, so I suspect that may B important for factor'ng too

[@LiftedStarfish]

This is completely unrelated, but I noticed that in this video, you said 'zones of influences' a lot, and often times people do sometimes accidentally pluralize adjectives like that, but the more I think about it, I'm just like "Bruh, English is just developing plurality agreement between nouns and adjectives"

[@lupusnox2266]

Not sure where else to put this as it doesn't really fit with the main focus of the channel but I was watching some of your old videos on conlangs and while watching them I had a thought that I would really love to see you play through the game Chants of Sennaar, which is based around you working your way through the world not knowing the langues of the different people and using context clues, the environment and understanding of English you try to understand the meaning of the people which you see in their own custom written text seeing your knowledge in that area would make me feel you would have some amazing incites and reactions to it as well as being able to give commentary on they different types and styles, but most of all I feel it would be something you would really enjoy, though it doesn't really fit into the style of videos you currently make.

[@Sabersonic]

Interesting video as always Edgar, especially in how the very wet areas could be sights for rainforest regions, tropical or otherwise. And while I can't immediately recall the sites of yearly upwelling from the previous video, I can also imagine the wet areas next to the upwelling would also equate to ideal arable farmland which further cements the idea of being locations of cities if not civilizations. Though the idea of farms in the equivalent to Antartica kinda funny.

[@caidenw1]

I think the biggest reason for the world being so arid is your abundance of coastal mountain ranges. You’ve got a lot of moisture unable to move more than a few miles in from the ocean at most.

[@wires-sl7gs]

He's also underestimating the effect of shallow and inland seas

[@Artifexian]

Yup! The mountains are perfectly placed to maximise dryness lol

[@PhoenixFlame321]

one thing to consider is the effect of rainforests: if you have biomes that absorb lots of water but also put out a lot of water vapor back into the air, it will act as a source of moisture in on itself, sending rain deep into continental interiors if the position of mountains, coasts and wind currents align right. A good IRL example is the Amazon. In fact, part of the reason why some regions of Argentina and Brazil aren't deserts despite being in latitudes from 20º to 30º is from the sheer impact of the flow of moisture the amazon brought to the interior of south america.

[@samlolly6364]

i think you are way under estimating the distance moisture travels. under your current model the midwest is a desert and half of the amazon wouldnt exist

[@Stephen-Fox]

Definitely enjoy these more timelapsey videos as much as the more tutorially ones.

[@PumpkinMaximus]

Can't wait for the end of this series where worldbuilding pasta shows up in one of these videos like a cryptid sighting 😂

[@VallelYuln]

Hi Artifexian, did you see Casual Earth? They have some great video's about earth's climate (including sources), that I feel inform very well and give a lot of insight beyond what many of the worldbuilding guides give.

[@Artifexian]

I've watched some of their videos. Good stuff

[@miki537]

absolutely not an expert here - but I think that making the world more humid will simply make for a more interesting project. It's just not going to be that much fun if it's all going to be desert.

[@wires-sl7gs]

Not the only reason to do it, as other comments point out he's underestimating the effect of shallow seas and Gulfs.

[@sparkieT88]

Seems to me there should be like a very very wet category, I see things as 4 "seasons" in the year as the ITCZ moves up and down. one all the way north, one all the way south and two in the middle period as it moves up or down. So if an area is wet during only one of these times it would be 1/4 wet, 2 times back to back it would be a wet season dry season, 2 times separated would be wet-dry-wet-dry, 3 times wet would be a very wet with a short dry season, and 4 seasons wet would be wet all year long. I feel like to understand precipitation you really need these 4 seasons, of course two of them would basically be the same. I don't know maybe next video it will make more sense

[@wires-sl7gs]

As someone who's followed the guy, a "Very very wet" Category isn't needed, this is mainly for climate and very wet already covers rainforest level, at least if a region is very wet year round.

[@karthikeyan020]

You seem to be missing on the massive monsoons that bring rain to the continental interiors. Also, almost all of the ITCZ has lot of rain just like in our earth. It’s really hard to find an area that is dry unlike in your map. You need to be more generous in distributing the wet areas around very wet areas especially without any orthographic rain. If rains reach the very wet area, they probably reach the wet area too. For example, your small Australia continent will probably be all rainforest and forest due to weather. As do the southern part of your Australia continent similar to how African west coast is.

[@malusignatius]

Regarding the bay: I think it's low enough in latitude that it would be warm enough to produce a reasonable amount of rain, so the area around and downwind of I should be reasonably well watered.

[@Auroral_Anomaly]

Yay! New episode!

[@Laria-68]

Can u plssss make it so we can have more moons

[@Nemo_Anom]

Overall, your planet just seems...on the dry side, especially if it's supposed to be more earth-like. Either you need to get more granular than just "dry, wet, and very wet" or you need to push moisture inland. Of course, if you wanted a drier planet, then you're on the right track.

[@wires-sl7gs]

He's trying to be realistic so he can't just "do" stuff, but he is underestimating the effect of Shallow Seas

[@Nemo_Anom]

@@wires-sl7gs Part of the parameters of his project, as I understand it, was to create an earth-like planet. I'm not particularly going to argue with you. This isn't the bible; he has tweaked things to his liking before, not deferring to the most realistic thing.

[@wires-sl7gs]

@@Nemo_Anom Yeah, just saying he seems to be generally trying to be realistic, and there is a limit to how much he tweak things, unless he decides to lean more into fantasy or something to justify what he wants.

[@samchurch1261]

I've been following your channel since about a year ago when I started to revamp my design for my fictional world and I can happily say that I'm nearly caught up! It's been great watching the journey of this channel (even if it is through bingeing lol) and I'm THRILLED that you'll be tackling spec bio. Thanks!

[@GreyBearcub]

Hello, I am new on this channel, I absolutely love it. I am an amateur writer with many ideas and worldbuilding fascinates me. I watched this video series (all 31 videos) and noticed that this world ends up being pretty dry. Similar to what happened to Madeline James Writes. My friend, you were too generous with those mountains. Yes mountains are awesome and sources of minerals, ores, coal and even salt, but they also mess with the humidity due to rain shadow. Perhaps changing the way the continents drift, add some rotation to have mountains form in a way that do not block moist air and do not mess with humidity. Look for example at Europe on Earth, it is relatively flat and dominated by westerly winds and the North Atlantic Drift of the Gulf Stream. Also, the Mediterranean provides humidity to southern Europe. I also noticed your continents are too "vertical" (north-south direction). It is good because it provides plenty of climate zones and biomes in a land mass, but having mountains ranges block onshore winds, specially from warm ocean currents, condemns these lands to arid climates and biomes. The two "horizontal" (east-west) continents are dominated by mountains or are located too polarwards. Once again, I am not a expert on this matter, I just wanted to share my knowledge about the subject and perhaps help other novice worldbuilders like me. Artefixian, I hope that the small piece of information I shared in this comment might help you balance the aridity of this world. You are a fantastic guide, keep up with this excellent work. Lots of love, happy new year!

[@CameraMan-it4qz]

I tested this one earth and it mostly worked well aside from dry India and mainland south east Asia, and rain soaked Somalia.

[@ronantheotec8563]

@Artifexian hi, in episode 21 of your series "Word reveal", many details and features were not detailed or even shown and explained. I understand that WP's work would take time to be explained in video, and I imagine that you chose to simplify things for us to move forward in the series. But I would like to know how WP managed to make this simulation. So maybe you could give us the sites and references that WP used to learn Gplate. Thank you for everything 🙏

[@ronq6780]

Hi Edgar, I built a world for not so long ago using your old climate zone videos. It was cool and really appriciated but now I really want to make it from the ground up. The first world was basically a copy of earth but with a different map (same tilt, same orbit, different continents). Right now my world has a different orbit and a much longer year and 2h longer days(but the same temperature as earth)(thanks to the help from the earlier videos in this series) + a world with a very short year. I have currently been binge watching the first 9 episodes of this series, so you might already have answered this in the videos I haven´t seen, but will you make an episode about the climate zones/avarage early temperature(including avg yearly and avg daily temperature fluxuations) but with a longer year and different tilts :) Really love your videos! You make good worldbuilding possible and I really respect the emount of time and energy you must be putting into this! Gonna be a patreon!(as fast as I get home and login to my bank)

[@Lilas.Duveteux]

Sorry for the accidental dislike. I fixed it. I think it's interesting to have a world with a lot of monsoon-influenced climates. Also, switches in temperature can create moisture to an area, for example, many boreal climates are very dry, but also water-logged because of the cold. So that super dry bit of land could get some moisture with melting glaciers and snow. All major rivers would come from the North and North-East and to the bay area. Snowmelt and wind storms allow for areas that receive very little precipitation to have lakes, rivers and agriculture (think Canadian praries) I think playing with rivers and lakes would allow to bring in more moisture to this area. Them being surrounded by deserts or steppes would create interesting trade routes. This geography would be so interesting in a High Fantasy setting as opposed to a speculative bio setting based on geography. Like, ancient peoples using the North to South river patterns using rivers flowing North to South, then East. In the upper, colder and more mountenous regions, the fast water streams can be effective energy for mills and similar industries, while surrounded by arid land.

[@Ninjaananas]

16:45 I think that place should be more on the humid side. Would it not be just like a mountain in the ITCZ getting rain from both sides? Such mountains are not dried up by the foehn either and I guess it would be the same here. But maybe I got it wrong.

[@273-e1k]

A drier world is actually an expected outcome of a low tilt world like you have here, that being said you could probably stand to extend the tropical wey zones much further inland than you have here. Africa or South America are good examples. You seem to be labeling some zones that should probably be hot steppe or savanna as desert.

[@Laria-68]

But if u are wondering why am asking about star systems mmu.. I have ready changed my star 27 time and the size of stellar neighborhood 7 time

[@kentario1610]

Question, and I haven't finished the video so it may be answered later, but does the potential precipitation need land to break on or would it rain at sea as well? Islands seem too minor to influence the rain to "break" and fall on them, but it definitely rains on islands too so I'm wondering about ocean weather.

[@francisdoherty5580]

21:00 If I'm looking at your elevation lines correctly the area in question, would be the drainage valley of the nearby hills and mountains into the lake. include away

[@Lilas.Duveteux]

Won't the zone that is near the large valley get for example any river system, that would probably create a moist area similar to the Nile river.

[@ngedigk]

POV: first like the video, then relax and enjoy Edgar's process. Love your videos and can't wait for the next one. Please keep doing it.

[@Jpteryx]

I think there could be a bit more of a Wet zone around the Very Wet zones on your map. As it is, you've just outlined a tiny amount of Wet around the Very Wet.

[@javierhillier4252]

at 3;50 does that mean if the land is flat the precipitation will go inland and stay the same for 2000 km

[@KiarraThune]

I don't think you can say it's a dry world yet until you plot in the major rivers. Also, as a number of others have said shallow bodies of water should contribute to precipitation. Evaporation can only occur from a surface; the volume below that surface determines how long evaporation can continue for. The North Sea and the Baltic are fairly shallow compared to deep oceans but both contribute to rain/precipitation.

[@kulichkun8709]

Well, I don’t think that rivers have a global effect on humidity. They certainly have a huge impact on their floodplain and coastal areas, possibly affecting distances of several tens of km max. This will not affect the global climate. Also, rivers should begin in humid areas, and given the fact that there are much fewer of them on this planet, there will be correspondingly fewer rivers and they will be less full-flowing. What will affect humidity is the presence of forests. Trees evaporate water from the ground, saturating the air with moisture that falls as precipitation somewhere further inland.

[@wires-sl7gs]

Pretty sure Rivers would come from sources of precipitation.

[@KiarraThune]

@kulichkun8709 Dry to me means absence of water, which is the point I want to address (it's a dry world). Currently, Edgar has identified areas where precipitation is either likely or highly likely. And these decisions have been based on static weather fronts. In the Ferrel these fronts move. Regions of precipitation are also areas where snow will melt in Spring, which will feed and form rivers. Egypt is mostly desert, but is also where one of first civilisations formed, and is currently home to 100+ million people. So, my point (which I'm trying to make in a friendly, enjoying the conversation kind of way but worrying that I'm not) is dry to me means absence of water. Artifexia will have major rivers and some will have sufficient volume to flow through dry regions.

[@KiarraThune]

@wires-sl7gs Pretty sure they do. And pretty sure they flow downhill too.

[@wires-sl7gs]

@@KiarraThune Yeah, but for the guide they don't count towards that as precipitation is one half of what will govern which climate is where, and the Koppen climate system doesn't show the Nile as separate from the rest of the Sahara, so there is no need to alter the precipitation map because of rivers. He is underestimating the impact of Shallow Seas though.

[@Laria-68]

What is the name of the black hole at the center of UHURA. Galaxy 🤔

[@Laria-68]

But what about the other star system 🙂 I know u have no time the other star system but I just wonder😁

[@DominoPivot]

Oh hey, new video! It's funny, I've started working on my own D&D campaign setting and decided to work bottom-up: create a village, then a surrounding region. In other words, the extreme opposite of what you're doing, haha. Then again, what you're doing makes much more sense for a scifi setting, whereas I can just explain anything that doesn't make sense as "magic" or "a dragon's influence". Though I guess a super grounded scifi setting where dragons ALSO exist and influence precipitations could be interesting 🤔😁

[@Stephen-Fox]

I'd argue that while most world building projects are going to be from both directions at once, the more spontaneous (be that a D&D campaign or a series of short stories) a more bottom up approach is more likely to be fruitful - What's going on on the other side of the world doesn't matter if the characters are all in a single city on Continent Y. For a TTRPG campaign, you usually need enough going into the first session that you're able to respond to anything the players decide to do, and then in the next week... Work on stuff based on what your players told you they're going to do), while the more preplanned the more you benefit from focusing on top down, at least within the scope of your story so that the broader scale interplay rings true.

[@TheStickCollector]

Nice to see more map building

[@DecadeAgoGaming]

I lost nnn because of this video

[@1954_Gojira]

Hey this question may sound really, really stupid, but do you NEED cratons? Could you do the entire Gplates portion without them? Or am I just a doo doo head?

[@Diesalot-sc9qz]

It helps to have them to determine the low points in your landmass and to help create unique shapes. I’m sure there’s a more important reason for doing so

[@1954_Gojira]

@@Diesalot-sc9qz thanks

[@cheriehill3577]

can we still be conlanging?

[@ellaofoakhill4661]

I 100% agree with @SybilantSquid and @Piggywhiff. As well (I know it'll be a little more complicated), you could do gradations of precipitation, starting from the high precipitation centres you've already figured and working outward, bearing in mind other factors like topography. It'll also help with determining many of your biomes, since the key differences between many of them are less directly temperature-based and more directly precipitation-based.

[@boombuffoon4514]

Oh man, I started watching your channel in quarantine and I kind of forgot about it until I just saw this video in the notification box. Amazing to see how far the game has come!!! Keep up the good work!!

[@oddscomedy7128]

I wonder if you're gonna include the köppen climate classification on the map. And I also wonder if you're also gonna include the other D categories like Ds, the cold Mediterranean; Dw, temporate/ continental monsoon

[@wires-sl7gs]

It's apart of Worldbuilding Pasta's guide, so most likely he will

[@oddscomedy7128]

@@wires-sl7gs I remember watching his realistic climate videos. Both parts and the retrograde one, he forgot the twonother continental types of climates, the Ds and Dw. He got the the Dfa/b and Dfc/d, so why didn't he included these two?

[@wires-sl7gs]

@@oddscomedy7128 Idk, perhaps to simplify the concept? or perhaps he didn't know much about them.

[@oddscomedy7128]

@@wires-sl7gs Ds is like the cold version of the Mediterranean, or the Mediterranean but at a higher attitude. They are rare and are met with sepcific conditions. Think of it like the rockies or nothern turkey. Dw is the continental version of the oceanic climate, usually occuring around where the cool currents are like northern china and the korean penisula, around 40°-60° around northern temperate zones. Gues he couldn't fit it all on his map.

[@wires-sl7gs]

@@oddscomedy7128 Yeah, if a certain climate it was rare or not very common, he probably left it out for simplicity.

[@itisALWAYSR.A.]

This episode was mostly an excuse for edgar to repeatedly use the word "moisture"

[@Artifexian]

Haha!

[@Dorsidwarf]

Artifexian upload to brighten up my dayyyys

[@VCOTABFONDD]

Woah

[@amehak1922]

Wet is preferable than dry lol

[@yipperson2974]

a new one :)

[@noriteller-elsberg2816]

yayyyyyy!

[@griffinhunter3206]

Poggers uwu nya rain time