Thanks Arsheesh
I am about to leave the Tutorial however and head off into the world of climates ... The first area I chose to work on was Ocean Currents. I spent quite a while reading about them and how they work and the information makes a good foundation for later work with Winds from what I can see. I started by placing the obvious Gyre in the northen and southern hemispheres, it is always important to remember they spin in opposite directions, northern gyre spin clockwise and southern spin anti-clockwise.
I used White arrows for currents that did not change the temperature of surrounding land, blue for currents that lowered the temperature and red for those that raised it. On an aside the Gulf Stream current is one of the reasons western europe and England are warmer than normal for their latitude. It took me a while to work out all the possible current flows, the smaller ones were harder and you have to take into account the equatorial counter current as well as the circumpolar current. Interestingly Iryth has circumpolar currents at the north unlike Earth. I am not sure it is all correct and could do with some assistance from anyone who spots any mistakes!
Anyway here is a small version .. click the attachment for a much larger one!!
As you can see I added Polar Ice caps!
Once I had and idea where the temperature changes on-shore would take place I spent some time creating an overlay map to show me where to increase or decrease the temperatures given in FT3.
Using the black and white areas as a guide, I went back into FT3 and altered the temperature layer, using a very large scale brush with minor value alteration (+1 / -1) I raised the temperature in the white areas a little and lowered it in the black areas also. This correspondingly altered the climate map which I brought back into photoshop and replaced the original. The weather (ocean currents in this case) made its first mark upon my world and moved me one step closer to a slightly more realistic climate. You can see it below, note how it is different in the areas marked above.
The growth of brownish and light green areas is quite noticable in the easternmost island in the southern hemisphere .. bathed in an almost permanent stream of warm tropical waters.
I suspect it will revert to green when the winds bring humidity to it later however! ... I am really happy with the way things are going at the moment, it was good to see the climate change dynamically when adding the currents and it gave me hope for the far more complex task of Winds and humidity later!
Next up will be climate zones ... and how AD&D disagrees with the real world .. and what to do about it?
Comments or Critiques welcome ...
Oooh just noticed I got all the currents lined up correctly when I look at the attachments all in a row.
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