Terraformed Venus

[acrosome]

I think these are the final temperature isotherms:

January



July



I had Wilbur spit out contours between Azelor's 1000-meter ones to try to guide my smoothing where I could.

On to precipitation, which I suspect is going to need a lot of research for me to get it correct.

Also, considering how much buttpain was involved in just making these temperature maps I highly suspect that this GIMP-user is going to go crawling hat-in-hand to some PS-user to run the script on the last step of Azelor's method for me...

[acrosome]

Hmm. If I nudge the axis of rotation just a bit, I get this:



Do you think that looks more interesting? It gets that large continent off of the equator a bit, and also maybe makes Africa and Asia a better model for that equatorial continent.

Dammit. Now I have to develop a half a dozen options with different axes and gets climates for them all, for comparison...

[waldronate]

But, now all of the climate work doesn't match!

[acrosome]

True. Obviously, I'm going to finish it as-is, but I may play around with different axes of rotation later and see if anything speaks to me.

But that little change I posted gets both Alpha and Ishtar nice, warm currents to impact them, so they'd be more Europe-like. Really, this looks good. And if I nudge it maybe just another 5 degrees I bet I'd get massive monsoons in southern Thetis and Ovda....

But... a project for later.

[zhar2]

This is awesome!!! shame I never noticed before!

[acrosome]

Ok, I think that we all knew that I would do this. I'm starting over again.

I nudged the planet 20 degrees to give it axial tilt, and to make for more interesting positioning of continents. Here's the output from Wilbur:



Here is an elevation map, using Azelor's coloring:



Here are labels, for reference:



I'm changing some of the names that are too recognizable, but haven't gotten to them all.

You can see that the way I changed the axis of the planet gets Aphrodite (the continent made of Artemis, Thetis, and Ovda) off the equator, so I can model it best on Asia. It also moves Chitaru north a bit, so that it isn't completely a frozen wasteland.

So, as far as biomes go: I'm thinking that Aphrodite is *Asia, Atlu is *Africa, Chitaru is *Europe, Bethar and Dwibe and nearby islands are the *Americas, and I'm thinking that the northern half of the Ulfrun Islands will be *Madagascar. But I'll see how climate works out before committing. In particular, I need to do that to find a suitable *Australia.

Finally, I started on currents:



My biggest area of doubt is the Perchtan Gyre (the one cut by the map edge) where I have the cold current breaking up like that around the Ulfrun Islands (Zisa, Fea, and Bellona). Cold currents tend to be more cohesive than warm ones, but obviously there will be some sort of currents around there. Should I leave it as is, or should I not have the cold current ramify around the islands? The channel between Zisa and Fea is narrow but deep. The one between Fea and Bellona is shallow.

Once I get that figured out I'll fill in minor currents, and get on with things.

[Azélor]

I'm not sure about the biome placement but it would help to have a map with the continent names. I can't find Ulfrun islands.

If the flow of water is small enough, it is possible to have mild current in the sea south of Atlu, flowing toward the pole along the western islands.

It could be complex as it is possible to have cold and warmer currents flowing on top of each other, sometimes in different directions. I think this is the case in Western Australis for example.
It can also be a seasonal thing. Since these are mainly surface currents which are greatly influenced by winds. But that is probably too complicated to be worth the time. And we are not even talking about the thermohaline circulation.

[acrosome]

Thanks. More work will follow. I'll monkey around with those currents south and west of Atlu.

Unless we cross-posted (since I do tend to edit and re-edit a bit) I think did include a map of names and labels as you requested.

Zisa, Fea, and Bellona are the Ulfrun Islands.

[acrosome]

How does this look for the Perchtan Gyre?:



It's sort of more "ugly", like you might expect currents to be around a lot of islands.

EDIT---

And here are completed currents. I only included minor currents if they seemed important to figure out climate, somewhere:

[acrosome]

Hmm, the climate work is making a lot more sense than the last time. Probably because with the 20 degree axial tilt added the continents equate much better with Earth's continents, at least regarding latitude, so it just "looks right".


Here are pressure zones, yellow for low and green for high: