Now that I’ve addressed the issues that made my last attempt at geographical zones incorrect, let’s fix the world so that it makes sense according to the physical laws governing planetary bodies such as the Earth. When we last left our confused planet, it was marked up to have the makeup shown in the image.
Let’s take a look at each zone I created, and whether or not it stands up to the test of reality.
The southern desert
Original: The desert was predicated upon the fact that I had damp winds coming in from the northeast and being blocked by the mountains. On top of that there were no damp winds coming up from the south. So, that southern desert was created due to a lack of moisture in the air, which leads to a lack of moisture raining down.
Flaws: Winds coming from the northeast in the northern hemisphere would be pulled to their right, and so would end up going more directly south and possibly even missing the continent in question completely as you see in the associated image.
However, these winds are coming from the northern hemisphere and crossing over into the southern hemisphere, which means they will start to deflect to the left. This gives us something more like the following image, where the continent is entirely missed by these winds.
Solution: I want to keep the southern tip of this continent as desert. Therefore, I have to tweak the major winds so that they come down from the north properly over top of the continent, hitting the mountains and stopping there. One alternative would be to have the winds simply originate farther to the west, so that they will hit the mountains as needed. Another method would be to have the winds originate slightly below the equator, to the east of the continents, and then send them to the southwest such that they curve more to the south and hit the mountains as necessary.
Let’s use the second option, as shown in the image.
The southern rainforest
Original: The rainforest came from the fact that these nice wet winds were blowing across the continent, and then stopping in their tracks when they hit the mountains. This meant that the clouds carried by those winds dumped their rain on the northern side of the mountain range.
Flaws: If I’d made serious changes to how the winds were working then I would have to rethink the rainforest issue. However, there is no need to change anything at this stage because it’s still working the same way. The winds are just a bit different.
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