Natural Phenomenon

[NCA777]

Hallos! I was just wondering how many if any pay attention to the scientific natural phenomenon of different types of landmasses interacting with each other? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is mountains+desert where the desert is formed by a rain shadow effect from water being essentially trapped at the mountains. If there are any other OCD individuals out there do you know any resources that would say other cause-effects of terrain to look out for? Thanks!

[Steel General]

Some here are sticklers for that kind of thing, others no so much. I probably fall somewhere in the middle.

[jbgibson]

Another general effect is drier in the 30-degree north and south areas, wetter at equator and around 60 degrees N & S. Google "Hadley cell" and surf from there for some ideas.

There've been several threads showing how people worked out plausible climates based on landforms, ocean currents, prevailing winds. Try searching for 'climate' (sorry I know that'll pull up hundreds of threads). I think I nattered on about the subject when I did a map called Zannania. I also have a tutorial half done on 'where does the wind blow' - try searching on the Guild for wind and tutorial - that brings up a number of related threads.


Yeah, 'OCD on climate' suits me :-). Next time you hit a good used bookstore grab a couple of textbooks on weather and climate.

[waldronate]

The best overall search term that I've found for worldbuilding (after "worldbuilding" itself) is "physical geography". There are also some excellent textbooks on the subject such as Strahler and Strahler's "Introducing Physical Geography" ( http://bcs.wiley.com/he-bcs/Books?ac...BKS&bcsId=1172 is its companion website ). New textbooks are a bit pricey, but the Strahler textbook can often be found at a reasonable price on the used market ( less than $10 at Amazon, or example ).