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0:03
Good morning, Interweb. World Builders log 39. We are continuing to worldbuild our fictional planet here placeholder name CRETAK. In today's video, we're going to chuck in some C climates, some temperate climates. As always, before we start, let's do a quick primer on temperate climates. The Köppen Climate Classification system recognizes nine subcategories of temperate climates. Each are given a three letter code.
0:30
You can see down here the first letter stands for the overall grouping of the climates. The second letter tells you something about the precipitation pattern. And the third letter tells you something about the temperature. So the first letter here will always be C, C being the code for temperate climates. The second letter can be s w or f, s means dry summer, w means dry winter and f means there is no dry season.
0:55
It's just bucketing rain year round. And the final letter can be either a, b or c. A means hot, b means warm, and no prizes for guessing that c means cool. So there's just like a lot of variation going on in here. That being said though, we can kind of break them up into three main kind of subtypes. The Mediterranean climates, the humid subtropical climate, and the oceanic climates. SoCsa, Csb,
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and Csc climates are considered Mediterranean climates. Here's what they might look like. Their defining feature is that their dry season is in the summer, which is kind of unusual. And they're also just like wonderful places to live. The humid subtropical climates, which are kind of characterized by like really hot, humid summers, think the US Deep South and the oceanic slash subtropical highland climates, which look a little bit like this.
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These are my least favorite climate zones because I'm currently embedded in a Cfb climate zone. Remember, f means it's never dry and I can confirm it is wet all the time. It is now the 21st of June peak summer and it is bucketing down rain. Why couldn't I just have lived in a mediterranean climate ugh? Now, a quick note on nomenclature. Before we go forward, I'm going to use the term x any time. I don't care to
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differentiate between categorical types right? So for example, for the Mediterranean climate, instead of saying these areCsa, Csb and Csc climates, from now on, I'm just going to say there are Csx climates where x means could be a, could be b could be C any and all of those don't care. That's really important. I'm going to use that nomenclature an awful lot. So just so we know we're on the same page. Anyhow that was a very quick primer. Let us now go and map
2:41
these temperate climates. So the first thing we're going to do is we are going to mark in the broad scale C band, the area on our planet for all of our C climates will go. By definition this area will be anywhere where the winter temperatures are between 0 and 18°C. Really simple time lapse engaged. You know the drill. Done. Winter temperatures from 0 and 18. C band. Next we're going to kind of like step down level. And we're going to carve
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it up based on temperature. Namely we're going to find our hot summer regions. Our warm summer regions and our cool summer regions aka our Cxa regions, our Cxb regions and our Cxc regions. So we will start with the Cxa regions. Temperate climates. Hot summer. These are going to go by definition in any areas where the summer temperatures are 22°C or higher. So it's just a really simple case of throwing on the summer map and painting away. Okay, Cxa climates, our temperate zone,
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hot summer climates done. And here is where things start to get a little bit complicated.
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Now, the reason for this is that in the Köppen climate system, Cxb and Cxc climates, so temperate, warm summer and temperate cool summer climates are differentiated based on number of months above a certain temperature. So, for example, in order for you to be a Cxb climate, a warm summer temperate climate, you need to be above 10 degrees Celsius for at least four months of the year. This is problematic because we're only working with two data points. We have
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a summer map and we have a winter map. So you'd think it'd be impossible for us to map the rest of our temperate zone climates. But fear not. Here's what we're going to do. We are going to compare our summer temperatures, the temperatures of our summer months, to our continental maps that we made long, long, long ago. In order to determine what the breakdown between Cxb and Cxc is. So, for example, here is a chart. The y axis here is temperature, and the x axis here
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is time. And the yellow line here plots the temperatures throughout the course of a year, with the summer temperature being up here and the winter temperatures being down here. The cool thing about having mapped continentality before is that it not only gives us the range between summer and winter temperatures, but it also gives us the shape of the graph. So, for example, like in a hyperoceanic zone, again you'd have to see the continentality
5:54
video for more on this. But in a hyperoceanic zone, the graph between the summer and the winter temperatures is extremely shallow. So we'll say something like like this, for example. Then in an oceanic zone, it's a little bit more. In a subcontinental zone it's a little bit more in a continental zone, a little bit more in a hypercontinental zone It's even more, etc. So simply by knowing a summer temperature and knowing our continentality, i.e. the shape of the graph,
6:21
we can really easily see how many months would be above a certain temperature over the course of a year. So if we imagine each of these bars here is one month, I'm assuming 12, just for sake of Earth and we’ll imagine that this dotted line here is the 10 degree Celsius line. We can see using this graph here that there's very clearly one, two, three, four months above 10 degrees. The graph is above the 10 degree line for four months of the year. So we know
6:49
that this sort of graph here, a region that would have this sort of graph would be a Cxb climate zone. I want to give a huge shout out on always to RossBayGeo for coming up with this system. And it just in most of involved a catastrophic amount of work on their part to kind of go through. And this is done like empirically by going to various places on the earth, checking their summer temperatures, the winter temperatures, correlating that with continentality etc. etc, to be able
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to make up rules such that we can map climate with only two data points without simulation. So massive shout out RossBayGeo. This is so so cool. Anyway, that is all the theory. Let's put it into action. So the order operations here is extremely important. Make sure you follow this like to the letter. First thing we're going to do is we're going to check any hyperoceanic zones. So if you're hyperoceanic and you're in the C band and your summer temperatures are between 10
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and 11°C and your winter temperatures are less than seven, you're going to be a Cxc climate. In all other instances, hyperoceanic zones within the C band should be made Cxb. So now if I check on my continental map here, recall that orange here is continental, yellow is subcontinental, turquoise is oceanic. And this black zone, remember, is our C band here. Within this C band, I see no hyperoceanic zones. Those would be the dark blue from down here.
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So it is extremely common in this step to not mark anything off at all. But just in case you do have hyperoceanic zones occurring here, these are your rules. Next we check the oceanic zone like before, if we have an oceanic zone and if it falls in the C temperature band, and if the summer temperature is between 13 and 22°C, we're going to market in as a Cxb region. A warm summer temperate climate. In all other cases where the oceanic zone exists in your C-band marking Cxc
9:05
So that is my oceanic zone bit done. Anytime there's an oceanic zone that intersects with the C band and the summer temperatures were between 13 and 22 degrees C, I marked in a Cxb climate. And for me anyways, that completed the oceanic zone. So there is no scope for me to marking Cxc climates. The cool summer temperate climates, which is fine. We'll just crack on and we'll look at subcontinental. So this yellow region in here.
9:36
This is pretty easy. You got a subcontinental zone that intersects with your C climate band if it isn't already Cxa so this pink region here, you just flat fill it in as Cxb dead easy. Subcontinental C-band Cxb Excellent. And finally we look at the continental zone. This orange zone here I only have a thin sliver of C band left here. Rule here is that if you've got a continental zone, invariably given the nature of continentality it would be a Cxa
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climate. But use this as an opportunity just to make sure your continentality maps are correct. Recall from a little bit earlier we said that Cxa climates, the pink climates exist in regions where the summer temperature is 22 degrees or warmer. Now, in this neck of the woods over here, we're actually about 22 degrees or cooler. So there's a conflict here, right? We're in a continental zone, which would imply a pink Cxa climate, but our temperatures aren't befitting a Cxa climate.
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So what do we do? Answer is go with what the temperature says. So remember Cxb up in all the oceanic zones here was between 13 and 22°C. This area feels very Cxb to me. It actually feels oceanic to me. So I'm just going to quickly fill that in. And I'm going to explain why. There we go. Cxb And the reason why you might have this conflict here is that note that we're on the eastern edge of the continent.
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And if we look at continentality maps of Earth, we see that for the most part, on the eastern edge of large landmasses, there tends to be a tiny sliver of oceanic zone. So if we look at North America here, we can see it's interrupted a little bit. But there is a oceanic zone here, the greens on the east, a little bit up here, a little bit here. And Greenland for this, for our purposes here is included in North America. You have the
11:42
oceanic zone running up along here. So the eastern edges of continental zones can sometimes have a little sliver of oceanic along the coast. You see the same thing over in Asia here. This orange is continental. But you'll notice that instead of just blanket like going across Japan, here we have a moderating influence going on, and we have a little bit of subcontinental and oceanic extending, a little bit along the eastern fringes.
12:09
Same thing up here, etc.. So that's what's going on in CRETAK here. It's not really a continental zone. This is a case where the eastern edge has a little fringe of oceanic. Therefore the oceanic rules that we applied earlier would apply here too, can be a little bit tricky to execute this given the amount of moving parts involved here. But with time it kind of becomes fairly easy. At this point, I'd also like to note that we
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did not marking a single Cxc region a cool summer temperate climate that is completely fine. A normal Cxc climates are like really rare. It is not inconceivable that an entire world could be devoid of them, particularly at the scale we are working in. If we zoomed in, to more like regional maps, we might see Cxc climates. The cool summer temperate climates pop up a little bit more, so don't be afraid if they don't get marked
13:01
in. And one of the reasons why these Cxc climates are so rare is that they're very closely almost related to tundra climates, in that they're basically tundra climates, but they're a little bit wetter, and they look really distinct from other temperate climates like think your mediterranean's, your Ireland, England, Deep South, all that sort of jazz. Like this stuff looks way more akin to the tundra, way more like the tundra than temperate climates.
13:31
So we've done hyperoceanic. We've done oceanic, subcontinental and continental. You'd expect that we would now talk about hypercontinental zones, but we are not going to definitionally hypercontinental zones experience temperature swings that would put any climates there out of the C climate band. We do not expect to see a C climate band intersect with a hypercontinental zone. If for whatever reason this does occur on your world,
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your continentality map is wrong and you're going to need to remap that. All right. And that's us in the home stretch, right? We marked out our broad C climate band. We divided it up by temperature. Hot summer, a warm summer, unfortunately no cool summer. And now all we got to do is divide up each of these sub bands by precipitation type. We'll start with the Csx climates. So definitionally any region that has a dry summer and a wet or very wet winter will be Csx.
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So in the case of the pink zone here it will be Csa temperate dry summer, a hot summer, and in the case of the less pink zone, darker pink mauve if you will. Temperate dry summer be warm summer. So for those using Photoshop pro tip here, if we just turn off all the irrelevant layers and draw on our summer precipitation, this white layer here, what you can do is you can at Ctrl or command click on a target layer.
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So I'm going to target all of this pink here. So Cxa control or command click that selects all of the neon pink. And if I go down to precipitation and go control or Command plus option and click, what that does is it will subtract all the precipitation away from the area we just selected. Namely, it's going to leave us with all the regions that are dry in summer within this pink band dead easy. Timelapse mode engaged.
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So those are my Csa climates. Just to emphasize again. And now I'm going to click on Cxb the darker pink control or command click to select only the dark pink here and then control or command plus option and click on the precipitation to subtract the precipitation out of that, leaving us all the areas that are dry in summer. But in those pink bands, namely our Csb climate zones. Just a little nubbin of it in there. Hello northern Portugal. So next we do
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to reverse any regions that have a dry winter and a wet or very wet summer, they'll be Cwx regions. That means within the pink zone that’s Cwa within the darker pink zone that Cwb, and we can use the same ctrl or command, clicking on different layers to add and subtract things to be able to target these zones. So timelapse mode engaged. And now, the very last step. And then we're out of here.
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Assuming we've done everything correctly, all other remaining C band areas should be marked in as Cfx . That's because all of these should be wet year-round. It's the only other possible permutation. And this is precisely why we put in all the arid climates first. We took care of all the dry areas year-round, leaving us with only wet areas. We've marked off the seasonal wet areas, and now all that's left for these pink regions is
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areas that are wet year-round. So dead easy in the pink area here the Cxa area, it's going to be Cfa f for wet year-round. In the less pink area, the Cxb area it's going to be Cfb. Timelapse engaged.
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Alright. Done. Off air I went ahead and completed the rest of the map. So this is what we did in this video. And the completed map looks like this. As always, there's a few things I'd like to tweak and double check, which I will do all in due course, but for the most part that is C climates put in done. Next time we are going to complete our climate map. Exciting times by filling in our D climates, our continental climates. So to kind of segue into our upcoming continental video,
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here is a bunch of elevation patterns that you should kind of be aware of as you're mapping in C and to a lesser extent, D climates. They're broken up by continentality zone, hyperoceanic to continental, and it's in order of increasing elevation. So for example, the first line here is oceanic zone. If you have like a C a climate in the oceanic zone, as you rise up in elevation, we'd expect it to go through a Cxb climate
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and then ultimately ending in a tundra climate, for the most part, sticking to the guidelines we've talked about throughout these videos will get you what you need here. I guess this is more of a kind of regional mapping sort of thing. Need to be very, very aware of this. Just as a bit of a heads up. Right. That's it. As always, thank you so much for watching folks shout out RossBayGeo for all the geography help. This method is his own. I had nothing to do with it and Ross
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will be in the comments at release of this video, chatting to y'all, dispensing some expert geography advice. How cool is that? So have a great one folks! And until next time. Edgar out!
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