Precipitation & Pressure Redo - Worldbuilder’s Log 32

After much experimentation, I think I have a precipitation and pressure method that I like. Shout out @rossbaygeo for contributing their expertise.

—————

LINKS:

—————

MUSIC:

Udo Grunewald

—————

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Intro
00:36 Website Updates (Thanks Vanga-Vangog)
00:55 New Precipitation Maps
01:59 New (Expert) Precipitation Maps
03:07 Sea-effect Precipitation
05:54 Improved Wind & Pressure Method
09:34 Planet Size & Dryness
10:41 My Ideal Methodology
11:38 Outro (Thanks Patrons)

—————

Thanks for watching everyone. It means a lot. ❤️

[WolfWalrus]

I treat Artifexian videos like Wikipedia articles. Edgar is great at doing original research but one of his key strengths is finding other experts and enthusiasts -- either by reaching out to them directly, or having them contact him -- and collating their knowledge into a digestible form with impeccibly thorough footnotes.

[gentleshark]

3 points I´d like to bring up:

1. Wet and super wet are of course interesting but by doing so you´re combining deserts, grasslands and savana in one mix. Which really misses out on important distinction berween them. I´d personally reccomend also adding arid regions with scarce precipitation (seasonal and medditerabean regions have seasons of being considered weg or very wet, wheras savannas and grasslands never get enough rain to be considered wet, but still enough to be not be dead).

2. A big factor most people are forgetting is evaporation by biomes, some 40% of precipitation in our world is provided by evaporation (if I remember correctly) with certain biomes such as the tropical rainforests sometimes recycling 80% of their water.

As an example, the sahel is likely fed by rain mostly provided through evaporation. Even spawning hypotheses that a reclamation of Sudanese wetlanfs for more productive means would cause the sahel to experience more droughts and central asia to receive more water due to more runoff reaching egypt instead of evaporating in Sudan.

This could make water go further inland, neccesary at making the wirld less desert-y like you noticed yourself.

3. Colder air contains less water, this is off course why mountains force precipitation, but this is also why arctic regions are cold deserts or tundra around the world. Wet areas close to the ice caps wouldn´t be as wet. This is one of the reasons why tundra are so dry.

[ajdogz]

Something useful would be a rainzone that separates normal rainfall from completely dry. I believe MJW does that

Edit: Something to add, vast amounts of rainforests and other vegetation that goes through water quickly can create potential sources of rain thanks to all the water being re-released by plants. I'm not sure if it would go as far as creating a difference on the rain map, but it's something interesting.

[worldbuildingpasta]

You know, the curious thing is the first version of my guide had low-pressure systems and a more complex system with I think like 5 levels of precipitation. The trouble was that the first few times I saw other people try to follow it the results varied considerably and deserts tended to end up in very odd places. I ended up rehauling that section to trim down a lot of the details and switch from gradients which people seemed to have trouble working with to more stark contrasts: rather than several gradations of pressure, there would be just subtropical highs and fronts, with fronts doubling as an indicator of precipitation; rather than 5 levels of wetness, there was wet and dry, with very wet as a bit of a kludge to cover tropical climates. The idea was to forget trying to recreate a whole picture of the climate and just zero in on the key points necessary to get the minimum information required for Koppen zones, without having to deal with all the little ambiguities of real climate.

Ironically enough I've been kinda coming back to the outlook lately that you can't avoid the ambiguities and it's probably better to accept that you need to just spend some time looking at real climate patterns so that you can go through this process with a more intuitive sense of how the outcome should look and adjust along the way. But I've also decided I'd go mad if I kept trying to do over that one tutorial a dozen times.

[madelinejameswrites]

😂 I actually tried out the front system in my latest personal worldbuilding project when you shared it because I was like oooh that looks new and way more straightforward

[gregwochlik]

Its too late for my world... I am at the "add roads and highways" stage. I used your much simplified method of having straight winds, and setting up the climate zones. This particular world does have a "contraversial quirk"...

[ldelgg]

Weird.... Youtube unsubscribed me from you and did not recommend this video to me... I was really waiting for this video, now know how i didn't stumble upon it.

[GeheimesT]

5:12 If I watched correctly one side of that inland sea will be dry and one will be wet, but that changes with the seasons.

I could imagine that creatures that live there have to constantly migrate back and forth (at least those that are not adapted to the dry season). Since the organisms that live furthest to the right would have to go a lot further, perhaps some species would evolve to be more likely to swim through the sea as the seasons change. This would allow them to land in the most desirable zones much earlier than those who would first have to walk around the water on the left. Over millions of years, creatures living in the water evolve to feed themselves from the migrations that occur twice a year, so that perhaps an evolutionary arms race arises in which the organisms constantly become larger or more social in order to survive.

But that is an idea for the future and depends on how much you want to flesh out your project, when you begin with the spec evo.

[BanditCat]

One thing to consider is that it is a super earth, so applying earth metrics is wrong because winds would be stronger due to more gravity, higher density, and greater coriolis effect. So scaling a planet up shouldn't dry it out too much because the winds should be able to carry water further inward than on a smaller planet

[Grathew]

If you want to add rain to the world without adjusting the oceans, add great lakes. If 200km is enough to spread some rain around a few giant inland lakes could help hydrate the interiors of the continents.

[lordbird]

Every time a new video comes out I get so happy :) this is such a good series!

[metagames.errata]

Starting my day off right! ... tomorrow.
Good night Edgar!

[idle_speculation]

I personally think WBP’s dry/wet/very wet distinction is overly simplistic, since most regions get at least some rain. Madeline James Writes’s tutorial has more of a gradient that I feel might be better for the purposes of climate.

[BlackEyedGhost]

I imagine you could mitigate the problem of large dry planets by supplementing it with a thicker atmosphere, meaning stronger weather patterns. The lower elevation mountains on larger planets might also reduce the rain shadow effect, but I'm not certain.

[Hwelhosold]

Happy new year everyone, its good to see everyone here

[eravas]

always a good day when artifexian uploads!! dude seriously, you inspired me (a few years ago) to actually start my own worldbuilding project, plate tectonics and planetary sizea and star masses and all and going from there and i’m having a blast so thank you for that!

[Zack-fulo]

I love your videos.
Your demonstrations just make things easier to watch compared to other videos

[Babonora]

Would atmospheric pressure have an effect on how far inland moisture could travel? For example, If you have a really thick atmosphere, could that allow precipitation to extend further into a continent's interior

[_Gojira]

Im still stuck on and struggling with the "how to make microcontinents" video meanwhile this man is reinventing rain on a god danm planetary scale 😂 keep going man, this is awesome

[pointyorb]

Note to self: don't put mountain ranges everywhere that could possibly be hydrated by warm currents