#orographic

[ncdweller]

Highlands, NC

Here, 13 miles from Highlands.

Amazing what elevation can do.

They are at 3,800 feet, we are at 2,200 feet.

[salvalaa]

Salvala - shot by Orograph / designs by Andrew Curwen

[bobomcfoe]

Very big shout out to my friend who sends me pictures and videos of all the cool clouds he sees so that I can tell him what sort of cloud it is. Autism win

[dahzmija]

NASA satellite image of a wave cloud forming off of Amsterdam Island in the far southern Indian Ocean

[bairenalenko]

Weather Reports on the radio here:

A heat advisory is in affect for eastern Washington with highs in the 100s. There also is an elevated risk of fires due to dry conditions. Please try to stay indoors during midday and visit cooling stations as needed.

In western Washington the high will be in the upper 70s with a slight chance of rain.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Ecology Vocabulary

for your next poem/story

Autotroph - Any organism that is able to manufacture its own food; derive energy from inorganic sources (light or inorganic chemical reactions)

Benthic - Organisms that live on the bottom of the ocean

Biome - A community of plants & animals that occupy a distinct region; defined by climate and dominant vegetation: tundra, desert, grassland & forest; can be subdivided, i.e. boreal, temperate, tropical forests

Boreal forest - (also called Taiga) Largest terrestrial biome, characterized by having very cold winters and coniferous forests

Dessication - Mummification

Detritus - Accumulated organic debris from dead organisms

Detrivore - Any organism which obtains most of its nutrients from the detritus in an ecosystem

Disturbance - An event that alters the ecosystem, i.e. the plant community and possibly the physical environment; natural disturbances include fire, landslides, windthrow, insects, disease, etc. Levels of Disturbance:

Tree-level: affects single trees or small groups of trees

Stand-level: affecting large groups (many hectares) of trees (insect epidemic, hurricane, logging, wildfire)

Site-level: affecting the physical environment is a dramatic way that all life is lost and a new soil environment is created (lavaflow, glacier, landslide)

Planet-level: affecting the planet as a whole (big meteor, death star...)

Frugivore - Animal which primarily eats fruit

Groundwater - Water found underground as a result of rainfall, ice and snow melt, submerged rivers, lakes, and springs. This water often carries minerals. These minerals can accumulate in the remains of buried organisms and eventually cause fossilization.

Halophile - Organism which lives in areas of high salt concentration. These organisms must have special adaptations to permit them to survive under these conditions.

Limnology - The study of river system ecology and life

Orographic Lift - Occurs when an air mass moves over a mountain range, air cools, drops precipitation, then as air moves down the lee side it warms and creates a rain shadow

Pelagic - Organisms that swim through the ocean, and may rise to the surface, or sink to the bottom

Rain shadow - The dry region on the leeward side of a mountain range, where rainfall is noticeably less than on the windward side

Riparian - Having to do with the edges of streams or rivers

Saprophyte - Organism which feeds on dead and decaying organisms, allowing the nutrients to be recycled into the ecosystem. Fungi and bacteria are two groups with many important saprophytes.

Silvics - The study of the life history, characteristics and ecology of forest trees

Tolerance - The capacity/ability of an organism to endure (survive, withstand) adverse effects from unfavourable environmental conditions; the opposite of sensitivity

Upwelling - The raising of benthic nutrients to the surface waters. This occurs in regions where the flow of water brings currents of differing temperatures together, and increases productivity of the ecosystem.

Xeric - Describes an environment or habitat with little moisture; dry to very dry

Sources: 1 2 ⚜ More: Word Lists

[cmaidaartworkblog]

I finally got around to compiling some of the extraneous, in-service-of-the-main-feature maps for the "Runaway to the Stars" Scud-planet commission that I thought were also worth showing, some because they reveal something unique about this planet's qualities, others because they're pretty, and mostly both. There's a good handful of those and a *lot* of explanatory text, so that's all below the cut.

First we have the maps that bridge the gap between wind data and precipitation. This pair of animated maps demonstrates, first, the Orographic effect that would theoretically result from winds blowing in each of the eight cardinal directions across the planet's whole surface, and, second, the Orographic effects which are actually produced by the local prevailing winds for each season. For both of these, darker values mark where the topography prevents moist air from precipitating (a rain shadow, on the leeward side of a raised terrain feature) and lighter values show where the topography catches most of the airborne moisture before the wind blows over it (a rain-highlight, on the windward side of a raised feature).

__________

The first static map, looking like a meticulously customized Jawbreaker, roughly represents the inland distance over which air has to travel from various bodies of water (also accounting for vertical distance in the form of mountains and the sizes of the bodies of water providing the moist air), which is another factor in where rain is able to fall.

__________

Another static map, included entirely for aesthetic reasons, demonstrates (in white) where at least ten times as much rain falls in the wettest month of summer as in the driest month of winter. The cyan end of the gradient represents where only 3 times as much rain falls, in that comparison. This was a step in figuring out what areas would qualify as Dry Winter (climate type Cw) in the climate zone maps, which ended up being completely nonexistent once all the other requirements of that climate type were measured for. All of the areas marked in white (meeting that 10x ratio requirement for Dry Winter) ended up falling under Arid or Semiarid instead.

__________

For comparison, *this* map shows (in cyan through magenta) where there is at least three times as much precipitation in the wettest month of winter as in the driest month of summer, one of the requirements for Mediterranean climate (or Dry Summer, climate type Cs). Not all of the marked areas ended up meeting all requirements for the final climate zone map, either, but at least *some* did, falling just outside the Arid/Semiarid areas.

__________

Another precipitation-related map, this one instrumental in figuring out vegetation density, demonstrates the reliability of significant rainfall. Specifically, this represents how many months in a row a given area receives at least 60 millimeters of precipitation per month, with areas in white receiving this amount for every month of the year, areas in black experiencing no months with that much rainfall, and shades of grey showing where this much rainfall persists for anywhere from one to eleven months in a row. The second map attached here shows that data broken down for the exact number of months.

__________

Next, here is a map that helped me find where Upwelling would occur seasonally. Since material from deeper waters is brought to the surface by the general movement of water *away from* the coasts, and since water is moved in that direction by winds blowing *perpendicular to* the coasts (counterclockwise for the northern hemisphere on a retrograde-spin planet like this, and clockwise for its southern hemisphere), it was crucial that I first determine what directions the coasts themselves were facing, with red marking coasts that face north, yellow for coasts that face west, cyan for coasts facing south, and blue for those facing east. This particular map was produced by taking a blurred elevation map of the shallows, using it as the displacement texture for a flat Plane in Blender, and pointing different colored lights at it from the eight cardinal directions.

__________

One of the very last elements that I mapped out for this planet was the discharge of sediments from the rivers into seas and terminal lakes, which required a *lot* of steps. The first of these was to isolate the different major drainage basins that would deliver water to various sections of the coastal shallows, as seen in the first, multicolored map. In the second map, we see the surface areas of each of the drainage basins, in the third map we see the average density of vegetation within each basin, and in the final map I've combined this data to show the overall total amount of vegetation in each basin, which should roughly correlate with how much organic material ends up washing out to sea, since river discharge volume and vegetation density are both (largely) contingent on the same factor: precipitation.

All told this is only a tiny fraction of the maps that were part of the overall pipeline. On Reddit you should be able to see these images in higher resolution, so I'm including a link to the corresponding post here

[timberwind]

High obliquity (axial tilt) worlds are really very strange. The ice caps of terrestrial planets with substantial water inventories creep down from their high polar latitudes as you increase tilt, blanketing more and more of the surface in ice sheets right up until you reach a tipping point found somewhere around forty to fifty degrees. There, due to the way sunlight is distributed across the planet seasonally - like a sunbather turning over just twice a year - the ice caps suddenly migrate into a new configuration, hot polar summers driving the formation of an ice belt around the equator. We know Earth likely can't enter such a state (although a few papers claim otherwise) - the tidal influence of the Moon, coming in at just over one percent of the Earth's mass, is thought to damp down the spin-orbit resonances that drive axial wobble.

But then there's Mars with its two pebble-like asteroid-moons, axial tilt relatively free to wander compared to the Earth. From <20 to >50 degrees it lurches around on, as far as we can tell, a timescale of hundreds of kiloyears to a few megayears - really surprisingly short in geological time. Interestingly, there's evidence* in the paper above that those periods of higher 30-50+ degree obliquity have, taken cumulatively over the whole post-Noachian history of Mars, lasted for up to a billion years. It'd have been interesting if we got to see Mars during these relative ice ages, a Mars almost more white than red, or a Mars with its lowlands bisected by a great wall of ice... The (orographic?) snow west of the four big Tharsis volcanoes in the high-obliquity present-atmosphere model (bottom right) below is kind of fun I think.

Also kind of interesting that so much snow piles up on the high-altitude uplands in scenarios with more Earthlike atmospheric pressures (if not compositions), mostly independent of obliquity. Seems fairly plausible that you'd get a similar kind of scenario when terraforming Mars or Marslike exoplanets, ending up with deeply glaciated highlands feeding glacial rivers down into lakes and seas in the more temperate lowlands. It does things just a little more difficult though - ice is more reflective than dirt, and all that increased sunlight bounced back into space means you'd need to ramp up the heat you inject into the climate as you get into the pressure ranges where polar ice can sublimate into the atmosphere and fall as snow or risk atmospheric collapse... realistically of course you're doing that anyway with your soletta mirrors and all that. Food for thought, though.

(*)The paper looks for a specific kind of crater that probably only forms when a meteor strikes an ice sheet, and finds a fair chunk of them down in the midlatitudes and equatorial regions.

[fatehbaz]

The magic of mountains in Mesoamerica.

Active volcanoes covered in thick green coats of misty cloud forest and rainforest. A focal point, an epicenter, the meeting place between two oceans and two continents. The origin of the revered orchid, vanilla!

Here, an absurd amount of endemic species with very small limited distribution ranges in Central America and Mesoamerica. Out of about 700 species of reptiles living in Mesoamerica, over 200 live nowhere else. Out of about 550 species of amphibians living in Mesoamerica, over 350 live nowhere else.

And this extreme biodiversity is boosted by the presence of so many mountain ranges located within the tropics, so that “cooler” habitats (at high elevations) can exist closer to the heat of the equator. And orographic uplift (rain in the mountains) means that humid and wetter habitats (”sky islands”) can exist closer to dryland habitats (arid valleys). And also different habitats can occur so close next to each other along the slopes of a single mountain (”altitudinal zonation”). And this is in addition to how the region is the meeting place between ecosystems of South America and North America, and between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

So that there can be about 30 species of hummingbirds that only live in Mexico and Central America.

Or there can be like 11 different species of venomous palm pit vipers all in the same genus living in just a couple of mountain ranges between merely San Jose and Ciudad de Guatemala.

Or how, within the borders of Guatemala alone there are at least 40 different species of salamanders, and most of them are so-called arboreal “climbing salamanders” which live in bromeliads and fern mats growing in the branches of trees.

Like how the mangrove hummingbird only lives in brackish swamps of the mangrove forests along the seashore of a stretch of coastline only within the borders of Costa Rica, and the hummingbird depends on the nectar from the flower of one species of tea mangrove (Pelliciera rhizophorae).

Consider the Motagua beaded lizard (Heloderma charlesbogerti), a species of venomous lizard in the same genus as and closely related to the beloved Gila monster. It’s an endemic species, living only in one valley, and there are less than 200 Motagua beaded lizards surviving in the wild. It’s “one of the rarest and most endangered lizards on the planet.” And for food, it relies on the eggs of the Motagua spiny-tailed iguana (Ctenosaura palearis), of which there are less than 2,500 surviving in the wild, making it another of the planet’s most endangered lizards. Two lizards, found nowhere else, entwined in a relationship, almost extinct. But it gets more incredible. For food, the Motagua spiny-tailed iguana itself relies on the fruit of several cactus species. (One of the dryland plants that the iguana relies on is Pereskia lychnidiflora, one of the only cactus-type plants that basically produces leaves.) Without the cactus fruit, the Motagua spiny-tailed iguana would disappear. Without the Motagua spiny-tailed iguana’s eggs, the venomous Motagua beaded lizard would disappear.

Think of frogs like Bromeliohyla bromeliacia. There are colorful poisonous tree frogs whose aquatic baby tadpoles swim around in the tiny pools of rain water that temporarily collect in flowers growing on tree branches and in forest canopies. A whole multiplicity of “small” worlds existing, some ephemerally and some more permanently. Whole unique ecosystems in the treetops.

Here, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean nearly kiss. They are separated by less than 70 kilometers of land! You could stand on the peak of a Central American volcano, drinking native cocoa flavored with vanilla, and nearly toss a stone between these two marine universes.

Amphibians, reptiles, and hummingbirds in Mesoamerica were just like: “Let’s find a mist-shrouded cloud forest near the slopes of an active volcano in a single mountain range and only live in an area under 5 square kilometeres in size and only between the elevations of 1450 and 1650 meters.” (This is the famous recently-extinct golden toad of the Monteverde cloud forest and the slopes of the Arenal volcano.) Then these creatures were like: “Also I’m probably extravagantly colored with neon blue or fiery orange or bright pink or something.”

“And I’ll live nowhere else on the planet.”

[cquackity]

can you look up types of clouds and tell me ur top 5 clouds based on vibes alone

MY OFFICIAL CLOUD RANKING

CUMULUS - i am often having a good day when the sky is filled with these

2. cirrostratus - i love how the clouds halo the sun. it's like cirrus/cirrocumulus but better. vibes

3. Cumulonimbus - looks badass, looks like an explosion, just cool man

4. nimbostratus - easily some of the best clouds to look at when storm watching. I enjoy how they streak down

5. Orographic - BIG FAN of clouds that go around mountains. What's a mountain without a cloud? Nothing at all

6. Cirrocumulus - BONUS CLOUD, because i love these clouds and i love to look at them in my day to day life and it deserves to be here

[kaitouhime]

Your Blood that I Bleed

Hashtag_DriveBy

Summary:

Ezio said, “She is his; the Gift the Apple bestowed upon him.” Not knowledge and the ability to use it, as Altaïr had asked, or for renewed youth and purpose, as Ezio had. No, when holding the Apple and the ability to wish for anything he desired, Desmond had humbly asked for nothing more and nothing less than the smallest of companions. One that he knew. One that he’d lost, at some point in his too few years. One who was more than willing to cross time and space to be at his side again.

Live a Life or Die Trying

esama

Summary:

There's someone in Dracula's Castle who does not belong there

Stargate Brotherhood

esama

Summary:

In which there is a solar flare

Flowers For a Planet

esama

Summary:

There are flowers growing in the Grey.

Let me be without regret

WhisperingDarkness

Summary:

That time Desmond wore a white sheet (and also changed history).

Orographic Lifts

TimTheToaster (tabletoptime)

Summary:

Ezio wouldn’t say he had been expecting anything in particular, but if he had been, it certainly wouldn’t have been this. What he found, in the chamber where the glowing phantom of a goddess once spoke past him, was three figures splayed across the strange stone floor. All three were naked, and all three of them had wings. In which some people get answers and other people just have the Weirdest Day.

Figments of My Imagination

Aelwyn

Summary:

When Altaïr was a child, he had two imaginary friends. Both of them claimed to be from the future, and both of them were immensely interested in some stupid Codex he hadn’t written yet. When Ezio was a child, he had two imaginary friends. One of them was a famous Assassin who taught him everything his father tried to hide, and the other was from the future and wanted to know why he wore his hair like a girl. When Desmond was a child, he had two imaginary friends. Both of them were from the past, both of them legendary members of the Assassin’s Brotherhood. When Altaïr grew up, he wrote the stupid Codex and hated every minute of it because he knew they’d be smug. When Ezio was a teenager, everything he’d learned from Altaïr helped him save his family even though his father had kept him in the dark. When Desmond was a child, his father told him to grow up and stop believing in fairy tales. When Ezio grew up, he followed Altaïr’s Codex and was told that he was a messenger for Desmond. When Desmond was a teenager, he ran away from the Farm. When Desmond grew up, he realized his imaginary friends weren’t so imaginary after all.

Total System Overhaul

esama

Summary:

In which Shen Qingqiu gets a new System

I've fallen back into the Assassins Creed fandom and decided to share my favs. (there was one more but for the life of me I cannot find it)

[brownweaselpoetry]

orographic clouds

climbing over the mountain —

daybreak

[licnheartedd]

hello my sunshine, i would like to know what is your favorite kind of weather (also sub question, what is your favorite type of cloud)

hi renn 🤭

i love rain. i love the ITCZ. i love orographic rainfall. i love conventional rainfall. i love biome classification by annual rainfall levels. i don’t particularly love being outside in the rain because it’s wet, but i love watching it

[the-littlest-kojin]

Endwalker spoilers within

Pushing his hood back and pulling his mask off, Nganno grins. Shimmering lights dance around his head as he sits, uncaring for getting his robe dusty.

Looking down at the map he has been given, his smile only grows. Running his hands over the depicted territory, his glowing eyes dance back and forth as he plans.

The ground is mostly baked clay, he thinks to himself, and I don't want to disrupt that.

Hm.

What if... I rose some mountains along the coast? That would cause orographic precipitation quite nicely.

Of course, it will need a way to drain to the ocean... Rivers, I think. Winding and twisting like a serpent.

Yes, that will be perfect.

~~~~~

Today, I make the Amaurotine version of one of my existing characters! Nganno, the Unsundered counterpart to Alha.

[tanadrin]

Biomes of Sogant Raha: Tropical forests, alpine and polar savannah

Tropical forest

Sogant Raha is comparable in size and rotation speed to Earth; therefore, it has the same number of atmospheric cells, i.e., two polar cells, two Ferrell cells, and two Hadley cells. Like Earth, the zone between the two Hadley cells is a major convergence zone for prevailing winds bearing warm, moist air toward the equator. Near the equator, that air cools, releasing its moisture, and rises; thick tropical forests are produced, with rainforests dominating the lowlands and coasts, and dry tropical forests with a distinct rainy season dominating the highlands and inland regions.

Sogant Raha's lower axial tilt reduces the astronomically-defined tropics considerably; since the planet is overall a little drier and atmosphere a little thinner, the climactic tropics are similarly reduced as well. The large rain shadow produced by the Arduinn Mountains and the Kelrus Plateau means there are no tropics on the leeward part of Vinsamaren, and the large continental landmass of Rezana limits the region of tropical forest in the eastern part of that continent to an area of orographically-induced precipitation between the lowlands and the mountains.

One feature of the tropical and subtropical zones that Sogant Raha lacks entirely are monsoon forests. Earth's monsoons are a seasonal phenomenon, driven by the shift of the intertropical convergence zone with the changing seasons. Sogant Raha's axial tilt is much smaller, as are its seasonal variations in temperature; the intertropical convergence zone moves very little throughout the year.

[Above: the major tropical forest regions of Sogant Raha, from west to east: south Karei, the Rocallan jungle, western Lanai, the Great Vinsamaren Jungle, southeast Deirama, the Jungle of Tigers, Kuj, and the northern Windlands]

Alpine savannah

"Alpine savannah" is here a catchall term for all mountain regions above the treeline, whose height varies with latitude. The largest alpine savannah regions are to be found in the Arduinn Mountains and on the Kelrus Plateau; even though much of these highlands are located on or near the equator, they are a region of fierce tectonic uplift, driven by the convergence of the eastern and western Vinsamaren plates.

Sogant Raha is not currently in an ice age, and though its global temperature does vary considerably over geological timescales, it does not have the same semi-regular cycle of glaciation that the Earth does. Thus, it has no permanent ice cover even in high mountains, and no permanent polar ice.

[Above: the major alpine savannah regions of Vinsamaren and Altuum]

Polar savannah

Between the slightly warmer climate and the smaller amount of circumpolar land, Sogant Raha's poles are positively balmy comared to, say, Antarctica. But they're still cold compared to the rest of the planet and comparatively dry; and of course they get much less sunlight. Within and near the small polar circles, a "polar savannah" biome dominates, which is characterized by a lack of tree cover, low precipitation, and plant life adapted to long periods of winter darkness. These regions are similar to Earth's tundras, but except at high altitudes, they lack a permafrost layer.

[Above: the small region of polar savannah at the northern tip of Altuum, near Sogant Raha’s north pole.]

[kaiokentimesten]

im LATE but. what weather am i

Orographic clouds! Or a good ol fashioned hurricane