Fantasy World Map

[Raptori]

I just now realized that most maps of earth show the northern pole blue instead of white ... So I guess your world does have pole caps, too?

In any way, the arctic regions are quite small, from the globe projections this looks like the snow-covered zone is somewhere >=80° northern and southern longitude. On earth that border is more like 75° (Asia) or less (Greenland (60°N), Canada (60-70°N), Antarctica (63°S)).

According to Global Warming Science, a world that warm would probably have more extreme and more unpredictable weather that earth.

The planet has ice caps comparable to Earth's, they're just shown at their lowest point in both hemispheres since I was basing the colouring off this map. I used Google Earth to compare latitudes, particularly with reference to Eurasia since I hadn't really considered adding glaciers - I think I'll add some big glaciers to continent 2 since it's a bit featureless at the moment.

I'm guessing that the principle in that map style is to show each hemisphere as it appears in summer (i.e. northern hemisphere as it appears in July, southern in January). For example where I live is entirely covered in snow in winter (complete with sea ice thick enough to walk on), but it's green even further north than the Arctic circle in the summer. I think making it green on the map gives a better idea of the climate than showing it as either snow covered or half and half (since the entire country feels like one massive forest!), so I just went with that. I'm planning that kind of climate to be the location of one of the major cultural centres of the world, since it gives an interesting dynamic that fits a few ideas I've had

I think the south pole on my planet would be considerably warmer than Earth's due to the lack of a large landmass covering it, but the continents close to it would create a situation similar to our northern hemisphere. It'd also have better heat distribution because those continents would deflect the currents away from the pole, so again it'd be closer to our northern hemisphere. However, like I said before I've only looked into this a little, so my calculations could be completely wrong D:

Good point anyway, I like thinking that kind of thing through and seeing whether it makes sense or not

Nice work so far! I agree with Maraxus that it seems to be lacking in arctic regions. Considering you said it was identical to Earth, then I guess you want to make the climate more or less similar? I like all the colours you've used so far though. Making it into a globe is a really neat idea

Thanks!


Illustrator crashed on me... but luckily I had only spent five minutes or so altering the coastlines. Time to start again...