The climate of Ulthuan

[wolfie65Participant 1250xp 0]

Well, you knoiw, if the Anullii mountain chain is high enough, it would certainly be possible that its’ peaks would be snow convered most if not all of the year. In our world, the Altiplano of Peru/Colombia is one of the coldest – and driest – areas of the world outside the Arctic, despite being close to the equator.

Although, referring back to Gav Thorpe’s Sundering series, Malekith is very impressed by the size of the World’s Edge mountains, so Ulthuan’s mountains can’t be all that high…..

[warcoloursParticipant 442xp 0]

Just a couple of thoughts: first of all, we have no clue where the equator of the Old World is… we jut ASSUME that since there are similarities with the geography of our world, it should be roughly in the same area but, for all we know, we might be looking at just a tiny fraction of the northern hemisphere…
Secondly, we do not know the general climate of that world: during the last glacial era, permanent glaciers covered most of Europe up to a large part of northern Italy, this might be a factor as well.
Thirdly, we do not know the general weather patterns of the Old World: this might include things like its axis and direction of rotation and the expanse of the oceans at its equator: if the water masses at the equator are significantly smaller than the ones on our own world, the whole effect on the weather would be massive.
Of course not taking into account the fact that a fantasy writer who knows how the weather work is a rare bird indeed…

[limburger 21910xp 1]

@moonunit over here at OTT (and on the OTT discord) you’ll find we can sustain a conversation about all sorts of nonsense.

And we can even do it without insulting those who happen to have a different opinion.

You won’t find that anywhere else on the interwebz  🙁

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@wolfie65 the real reason is probably ‘sex sells’, but we can pretend that (dark) elves have a different physiology that enables them to survive cold without the need for as many clothes as humans. Kind of like how birds can stand in cold water without any issues while we’d be freezing our toes off …

[onlyonepinman 18076xp 0]

@warcolours it’s not entirely true that we don’t know where the equator is.  There are maps of the entire world out there that show both the Northern and Southern wastes, marking the “poles” of the world.  This allows us to infer the orientation of the world and thus where the equator would be. It is also a facsimile of the real world, with roughly the same continents, cultures and countries in roughly the same place as their real world cognates, further reinforcing assumptions about climate.

 

[torros 23822xp 1]

Can you say that for certain ?…Maybe they have adapted to the climate and like  the artic fox  and   developed white scales.  They  could have further adapted and now have furry mittens and bobble hat  to stop them getting too cold during the winter period

[warcoloursParticipant 442xp 0]

@onlyonepinman We might assume that the Northern and Southern Wastes are the polar caps of the planet, though we are not completely sure about that. But even then we would not know the actual inclination of the planet’s axis nor its rotation. However, even if we were to base our assumptions on these maps taking at face value that we know these things and they match the conditions on our planet and the equator runs approximately in the middle, say touching thee northern coast of the gulf of Menes, we can’t help but notice that the ratio between land and water masses at that latitude is different from our own, and that would have a massive impact on the whole dynamics of the general climate

 

[onlyonepinman 18076xp 0]

I think we are doing more than just assuming. The map I showed has been presented as the expanded world map as opposed to the old world map which is where the game is primarily set. The Warhammer world has always been a facsimile, intended to roughly match the real world. It isn’t just an assumption that the Southern Wastes are the southern most tip of the world, it’s baked into the design of the world.

However even if we say we are only looking at the northern most fraction of an even bigger map, then we still have massive climate anomalies in Araby and Lustria, the former being pretty much a Saharran desert, the latter a tropical rainforest, neither of which could exist in northern latitudes.

[warcoloursParticipant 442xp 2]

As I said, we do not know enough to determine the weather pattern of the Old World: we just have to accept the facts as they are given to us, knowing that they do not appear to make a lot of sense under the general rules of meteorology. I doubt that the authors ever stopped for one second to think about these things.

 

[wolfie65Participant 1250xp 0]

@limburger – Birds can stand in cold water because there’s very little blood supply to their feet. They can swim in cold water because their feathers are coated in fatty oils that insulate them in much the same way fur insulates mammals. The feathers are also hollow, which creates that dead air space necessary to keep out the cold, especially when it’s windy. Humans – and, presumably, Elves –  are very inadequately equipped when it comes to dealing with weather outside the tropics.

[bvandewalkerParticipant 2080xp 1]

Guy’s GW was cheap and  just reused the real world’s map with some creative editing for Old World (like a good number of other fantasy worlds). Logically it should probably  have similar weather patterns to earth, the only caveat is chaos magic being a factor.

[wolfie65Participant 1250xp 0]

Weather patterns in our world sometimes create what they call a ‘polar vortex’, which pulls Arctic air much further south than it would normally go. Since Caledor and other Elven mages created a vortex, centered on Ulthuan, that draws magic – originating, as per GW canon, in the Realm of Chaos – into it to keep the world safe, I suppose one could argue that cold air is pulled with it  from the north, which GW equates with Chaos, thereby making Ulthuan much colder than it would be given its’ location and status as an island, which would normally lead to a milder, maritime climate.

[warcoloursParticipant 442xp 1]

Logically it should probably  have similar weather patterns to earth, the only caveat is chaos magic being a factor.

Not really: putting aside considerations regarding the inclination of the world’s axis and the sense of rotation, which determine the direction of the prevailing winds and marine currents, just the fact that there is a significant difference in the proportion of land and sea masses at the equator is enough to postulate very different climates.

[onlyonepinman 18076xp 0]

@warcolours the climate has as much to do with geology as it does meteorology.  The closer something is to the equator generally the warmer the climate.  The higher the attitude,  the colder temperatures might be.  We can see that these rules mostly hold true but Ulthuan is very much an anomaly that cannot effectively be explained by meteorology alone, not without some sort of magic involved.  It’s climate should range between temperate in the north to Mediterranean/tropical in the south, but it doesn’t

[warcoloursParticipant 442xp 1]

the climate has as much to do with geology as it does meteorology

I think you meant to say geography, rather than geology; but unfortunately, it is a bit more complicated than this. Naples and New York are more or less placed at the same latitude, yet they have very different climates: in New York, it snows quite frequently and winters are cold, in Naples the climate is more temperate and very rarely snows. The main factor in the creation of climate is the way that air and water masses move around: even considering that everything else is similar to what we have on our planet (earlier I forgot to mention the role the composition of the atmosphere has in conserving or dissipating the temperature), a substantial difference in the ratio of land and water masses at the equator means massive differences, starting with the size of the cloud cover and the way that warm and cold currents go around (both air and water), which is what eventually creates the climate.

[grantinvanman 2477xp 0]

How’s the weather today, Ollie?

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