http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Asparagus/Sandbox/CountryProfiles/Climate
For each country so we can make a cohesive climate map of this planet. Thanks. :)
OpenGeofiction
http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Asparagus/Sandbox/CountryProfiles/Climate
For each country so we can make a cohesive climate map of this planet. Thanks. :)
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Discussion
Comment from Thunderbird on 1 May 2016 at 05:04
I would love to. But what should I base the climate off? My country is located off the coast of South Africa in the real world. Should I use similar weather as Johannesburg?
Comment from Luciano on 1 May 2016 at 07:10
There is a climate proposal by isleño at the link below.
http://i.imgur.com/cGhMUQJ.jpg
I think this is the place to start.
Comment from Yuanls on 1 May 2016 at 08:06
@Luciano
That’s a bit problematic, as I wasn’t aware of its existence then. My country has a British-like climate, or at least a northern European one, whereas the map has labelled ‘very cold’ right over my country. I take this map was made quite a while ago, so I guess it needs to be adjusted for new countries and users. Plus, there are the new continents to worry about as well, which may affect the climate of our existing planet. Yes, it could be a starting point, but I feel as if it is slightly redundant.
Comment from Luciano on 1 May 2016 at 08:37
Well, on the one hand, I understand the frustration about climate and location of country. On the other hand, things like climate follow the laws of physics. As such, given your country’s latitude and position relative to the oceans (analogous with the east Siberian island called Sakhalin, climate data here), I’m not sure it will fit well with a concept verisimilitude to simply declare your country has a different climate.
To do so is not much different from Scotland suddenly announcing that they have tropical climate. The response of the climatologists might be, “Er… good luck with that.”
That map has always been available on the World Climate talk page. And… many users have struggled when they realized the concept they had of their country’s climate didn’t match with the latitude and location. In several cases, entire countries have moved, as a result - Karolia is a good example. I had originally conceptualized Ardisphere as quite wet, with green mountains and woodlands, and only found that map after much mapping had been done. I was frustrated, as you are, but I also worked hard to understand the climatological issues involved and worked out a more realistic compromise, and conceptualizing a tropical wet-dry / transition-to-desert climate for the country.
Of course, everyone is free to make up whatever climate they want for their country, but we eventually have to ask ourselves, as a community - what kind of world are we making? A random patchwork - Commonia, on a grand scale? - or a coherent, plausible, integrated whole. The issues of climate are no different from those of history. Resolving them will involve compromise, both among users and between all of us and the domain of verisimilitude.
I have had many issues of verisimilitude raised about my work, and in every case, I have either worked out a compromise solution with extensive changes, or successfully argued why “it is the way it is” in relation to what is realistic. So. If you can explain the climate science behind why your country has the climate you think it should, in the position it is in, we are all open to persuasion. I have done something similar with Mahhal. It’s rather far south - overlapping the Antarctic Circle. So how is it that Mahhal has so many people, and agriculture? Well, I counter-argued: Norway. That country straddles the arctic circle, but it is touched by a warm Atlantic current that moderates its climate. I proposed the “Harda Current” as a warm current down the east coast of Antarephia. This is plausible in comparison to the real world patterns of ocean currents. So I recommend people find a real-world example of how to solve the climate problem, rather than simply announcing that their climate is such-and-such, and latitude be damned.
Comment from isleño on 1 May 2016 at 12:44
A few quick notes on that climate map I made:
Terms like “very cold” can be vague, and can differ from person to person, which means the city labels might be more helpful. For example, the nearest city to Glaster is Montreal, which has a lot of (what I’d call) “very cold” weather, but plenty of people find it just fine overall.
I’m not a climate scientist. I modeled the map on Earth, and then purposely tried to skew things towards providing as much mild, temperate area as possible, since that’s what most people seem to like. (You could easily imagine something very different, for example: the alternate map by Danny11, which presents a much drier world.)
As Luciano says, there’s definitely room for variation. If someone wants to say a location is somewhat milder, warmer, colder, wetter or drier, I think that’s fine — especially if there’s a plausible climate scenario to back it up. But we do want to avoid anything that is flatly unbelievable: four seasons in the tropics or pleasantly mild around the poles, for example. And of course people should try to coordinate with their neighbors so that the climate is plausible across borders. :-)
Comment from Leowezy on 1 May 2016 at 16:24
Could someone check whether my climate table for Pyingshum complies roughly with the world map by Isleno? I’m really insecure because supposedly it lays somewhere between St. Louis, Chicago and Atlanta… And would you agree that Kojo as a whole can be classified as Cfa and Dfa? And is it realistic to have Kojo’s west as an empty grassland? xD
Comment from bhj867 on 1 May 2016 at 17:17
Another thing to keep in mind is, like earth, the shape of geography has a massive effect on climate. The distance from the nearest ocean and the location of mountain ranges have a huge impact on wind currents and moisture content. That is something to keep in mind and help customize your climate so your country isn’t all one climate. I agree in the sense that the laws of physics need to apply to this planet.
Comment from Thunderbird on 1 May 2016 at 20:52
I will fill in my climate data based on the world map Isleno made. It looks like my country has a climate similar to Curitiba, Brazil.
Comment from bhj867 on 1 May 2016 at 23:48
isleño would you be up to create a new map after a majority of the country climates are put in place. By the time it is filled in, (with users abiding the laws of physics) it should look more like this, with more detailed areas. It will also give us a good idea of where all of the mountainous zones are on the planet.
Comment from Luciano on 2 May 2016 at 00:55
I really like bhj867’s suggestion for a new map, but will only add, from my perspective, that although isleño is the indisputable King of excellent graphics in OGF, I’d like to extend bhj867’s invitation to ALL the members of the community who might have the skills to do something like this. If some aspect of OGF is interesting to you, don’t be shy to take some initiative and create!
Comment from bhj867 on 2 May 2016 at 02:17
Here Here Luciano. :) Everyone is welcome.
Comment from isleño on 2 May 2016 at 02:25
Well I for one think the identity of the “excellent graphics monarch” is highly disputable! There are some really talented people here, and if they’re interested they should feel free to contribute.
I’m also really intrigued by the possibility of generating maps using the same kind of setup that was used for the overview map. In theory, we could have a table with data for each country, translate that data into map colors, and instantly generate a world map of official languages, or income levels, or types of government, or total population, etc, etc. This kind of map might not work too well for climate, since large countries would probably have more than one climate zone… but who knows, maybe it’s possible to split those polygons or something. Sadly I lack the technical skills to do this myself, but if someone else might be able to figure it out, that would be amazing…
Comment from bhj867 on 2 May 2016 at 03:01
Who is in charge of modifying the overview map and creating it? That could be something we could do depending on the time it would take to create it.
Comment from Luciano on 2 May 2016 at 04:08
@isleño - That is an intriguing idea.
For climate, I could see two approaches. One would be to simply have a climate tag attached to each country relation, e.g. “ogf:climate=Cwb” or whatever. As you point out, though, this would end up kind of unrealistic, since climate doesn’t follow political boundaries.
The second idea would be to create special “climate boundary relations.” This is quite doable. I guess I prototyped the approach your describing with my linguistic map of the Ardisphere’s native languages:
http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Ardispherian_First_Peoples_-Languages#Map_Showing_Current.28since_1700.29_Language_Distribution
My concern would be that many users, lacking experience and understanding, would end up “breaking” them so regularly. They might end up as a kind of maintenance nightmare. “What are these weird relation and boundary lines across my country?! Delete! Delete!”
One compromise would be to build the planet relations perhaps initially in-world, to give people a chance to collaborate and update what made sense for their countries, but then delete the apparatus from the server and keep it in an offline .osm file, much as I have been doing with my contour maps. This could be used to generate a world climate “multimap with polygons” (i.e. the style of the overview map) but be maintained by an individual.
Anyway I find it a very compelling idea. I may do an experiment, focusing on the western hemisphere (where we lack a climate map anyway), and see what I can come up with.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 2 May 2016 at 15:40
It would be very helpful to have an overview map of climate. Unlike the Köppen-Geiger map, it could work back from climate towards vegetation cover. At some point we need to address vegetation/biomes too.
There are ways to to this without referring back to data in the .osm data. The territory map uses the multimap extension - you could duplicate this, and set climates for individual countries. Alternatively you could to polygonise different climate zones? I think this is what you mean Luciano?
Another way to create an interactive climate map in the wiki (i,e, not along the lines of the territory map) would be to make an interactive map based on an image file. As the .map extension doesn’t look to be supported, you would have to do this manually, but it could be done. It would be hard to break - but it wouldn’t be easy to edit either. However, the ‘lack of exactitude’ you’d get on a clickable map might give users more freedom with their countries climates.
Comment from Oxalia on 3 May 2016 at 18:03
My attempt to create a climate model for Maalfland (mainland):
(Sorry, for now it is without any respect for my neighbouring countries.)
Comment from Luciano on 3 May 2016 at 21:52
@Oxalia - very nice. That is EXACTLY what I was imagining in talking about creating climate boundary relations. If each country did this, with that special tag “ogf:climate=…”, then that data could be used to create a map similar to the OGF:Territories map, using a script derived from the one I use when making updates to that map. Kudos!