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Worldbuilding

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for your answer, I'm aware of Milankovitch cycles and the green Sahara, and it is indeed very interesting. However, "go with your map if it fits the story" isn't the kind of response I'm looking for. $\endgroup$
    – fred die
    Commented Feb 21, 2022 at 20:23
  • $\begingroup$ @freddie: But what else are you looking for? The point of the answer is that even for Earth, the most Earth-like world which can ever be, one specific large tropical continent would be shown very differently on climate maps at different times, separated by only a few thousand years. There is no other possible answer than, yes, your map is sufficiently fine, and you are even allowed to tweak it to a large extent if you want or need to. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Feb 21, 2022 at 20:26
  • $\begingroup$ I'm specifically asking if given the mountain ranges and plateaus that I've drawn, moist air would be able to reach further inland, or if my intuition about how orographic lift works is right. An answer like this $\endgroup$
    – fred die
    Commented Feb 21, 2022 at 20:30
  • $\begingroup$ Or, maybe rain shadows won't have such a big effect at these latitudes, and there are other factors that I don't know about. $\endgroup$
    – fred die
    Commented Feb 21, 2022 at 20:37
  • $\begingroup$ @freddie: The bolded question is the question is literally "Is my desert too small?" I have given a real world example showing that your desert is perfectly allowed be as large or as small as you want it and need it. Nobody can compute such a map even if given detailed accurate data, because the climate of a world like Earth, with a water cycle, is a chaotic system (in the mathematical sense) and changes all the time. At the moment of the story, the climate of the world is as shown on your map. It will certainly change over centuries and millennia. Climate maps are empirical results. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Feb 21, 2022 at 20:39