Designing planet using global climate model software?

[AW1]

To make a fictional planet's various regions more accurate in terms of climate, foliage etc, does anyone know of any software that would be usable to model the global climate zones? The software would need to allow adjusting the size of the planet, rotation speed and of course the map itself and other crucial factors. Slower rotation would mean much longer days and hence a more variable temperature (hotter afternoons and colder nights) as well as stronger winds along coastlines and potentially fewer convection zones which have a huge impact on prevailing winds and hence rainfall in each region. The size of the planet also has a large effect obviously. I'm trying to make the planet as authentic as possible.

 

[msstice]

That's a cool idea. I don't know of any software, but I'd suggest looking on github and doing a search on google.scholar for papers on this topic - the papers may link to any software out there.

The software, likely will be very user unfriendly and will require some programming knowledge to get up and running, if it is anything like typical academic software.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I would be surprised if there was a software package that could (easily) do what your asking for. Even a simple climate calculation depends on a large number of factors that make modelling it really quite difficult. (I am understating this quite a bit!)

However I think you can do a lot with a bit of knowledge and using some very basic simplifications that do take into account the physics of the situation.

Have you seen the Youtube channel Artifexian?

He talks about building worlds to the level that I think you want, but doesn't use a supercomputer nor any modelling software to construct them. But, with my physicist hat on, I can vouch for the information and ideas that he uses. At least for the videos that I have watched!

See, for example:

(note, in this video he is talking about Koeppen classification, but states that you need your landmasses, ocean circulation and other factors before embarking on trying to work out what your climate zones will be.)

If you go into his playlists you can see he has about 60 short videos on worldbuilding on a large variety of topics that may be helpful for you. He also had a recent excellent series on how to draw some great looking maps. Hopefully some of it may be useful.

If you are thinking of making your world very different from an Earth-like planet this may not be enough, but use his vids as starting points for further research to try and estimate what would be different for your non-terran world.

 

[JS Wiig]

This is me, of course, but I would just use my imagination...

 

[AW1]

I would be surprised if there was a software package that could (easily) do what your asking for. Even a simple climate calculation depends on a large number of factors that make modelling it really quite difficult. (I am understating this quite a bit!)

However I think you can do a lot with a bit of knowledge and using some very basic simplifications that do take into account the physics of the situation.

Have you seen the Youtube channel Artifexian?

He talks about building worlds to the level that I think you want, but doesn't use a supercomputer nor any modelling software to construct them. But, with my physicist hat on, I can vouch for the information and ideas that he uses. At least for the videos that I have watched!

See, for example:

(note, in this video he is talking about Koeppen classification, but states that you need your landmasses, ocean circulation and other factors before embarking on trying to work out what your climate zones will be.)

If you go into his playlists you can see he has about 60 short videos on worldbuilding on a large variety of topics that may be helpful for you. He also had a recent excellent series on how to draw some great looking maps. Hopefully some of it may be useful.

If you are thinking of making your world very different from an Earth-like planet this may not be enough, but use his vids as starting points for further research to try and estimate what would be different for your non-terran world.

Thank you. Those videos are helpful, although it means I need to learn all the principles and try to apply them to my map using what little brain I have. Figuring out ocean currents is especially difficult but also crucial.

 

[AW1]

That's a cool idea. I don't know of any software, but I'd suggest looking on github and doing a search on google.scholar for papers on this topic - the papers may link to any software out there.

The software, likely will be very user unfriendly and will require some programming knowledge to get up and running, if it is anything like typical academic software.

I found a free, open-source NASA simulation called GEOS 5, which uses an extremely detailed model that can simulate things like hurricanes etc; but I suspect it would run slowly on a PC.