Description
Adventures in World Building #6 - Wonderball Clouds
Welcome to Adventures in World Building #6. Previously in AWB, we started construction of the floating islands of Bob. Today will dive a little deeper into a couple of small technical aspects of floating islands.
Our first task today is:
[3] Go into more specific weather/climate conditions of floating islands.
Last time I think I covered the few unique aspects of general weather that apply to all floating islands. We'll get into individual weather patterns for specific floating islands another time but for today we're going to talk about temperature.
How hot or cold are floating islands? The easiest and least thought out answer is that it depends on the environment. While that is true, there is another variable besides the surrounding environment that the island is passing through and that is altitude. I've had to do some research on this matter to figure out just how altitude affects temperature since altitude will play a huge role in the floating islands world element. Now I'm no scientist and I could be completely wrong but from what I gather, the higher up you go in the sky, the colder it gets. (detail #1)
If you were to go mountain climbing, especially on a mountain like Mt. Everest, it gets colder and colder the more you climb even though you get closer to the sun. The reason for this is that there is less air; the air is less dense the high up you are. Interestingly enough, the proportions of gases are still roughly the same no matter the altitude but there are proportionally less quantities of all gases the higher they are. (detail #2)
If I got my facts right, the air acts like a blanket; the denser the air, the thicker the blanket. The sunlight doesn't warm the air but the air is warmed by the ambient temperature of the ground. The ground itself is warmed by the sunlight while the rays of light just pass through the air. So at low altitudes, there is much more of an air blanket to keep the heat in and at high altitudes there is much less. A side effect for us breathing folk would be that there is also much less oxygen at higher altitudes, making it harder to breathe. (detail #3)
With that science established, logic then dictates that floating islands, especially the most lofty of them, are freezing cold with little air to breathe. That doesn't sound like a very inviting place. While I do want the floating islands to be a bit more austere than the common idyllic fantasy version, that seems a little too far and doesn't give them much room for more developing.
Let's change things up by inventing something new. This is tricky stuff and we're only going to scratch the surface today with it. First, we need to identify our problem. That's easy, we just went over that. Floating islands are too cold and not very habitable due to low air density.
Next, we need to figure out what needs to change to fix the problem. Not to hard with this one, the floating islands need more air density. If they had more air density, it would be warmer and more breathable up there and give us a lot more room for future development. If we could crank up the density to even greater than surface level density, we could compensate completely for the altitude and maybe even over-compensate on purpose. Doing so might aid in the creation of more tropical islands. Essentially what we are doing is giving floating islands their own sub-atmosphere.(details # 4 and 5)
We know what we need to do, all that's left is to figure out just how we go about doing it. This is step is often overlooked by world builders who make their worlds through divine decree and the consequence is that the cogs and gears of their world don't turn; they don't even connect. At the surface all would seem well but as soon as you would stop to admire the flowers, you'd realize on closer inspection that they were synthetic. What we need to do is figure out why is the air around floating islands denser than the rest of the air at high altitudes; why does it linger instead of fall? The same could be asked of the island. Why is it up in the sky and not on the ground?
Before we get into that, let's give ourselves a gold star for covering altitude.
[3] Go into more specific weather/climate conditions of floating islands.
And with that, let's move on into our next task.
[5] Figure out ROUGHLY why floating islands float.
I think we can kill two birds with one stone here if we can figure out why floating islands float. If we know why the rocks floats, we can't be too far off on why the air around them floats and gathers in a dense, invisible cloud. Hmmm, maybe this also will affect the water vapor of clouds when an island passes through...would this create a very dense fog? Would it linger abnormally long? Would it linger even after the island passes through the cloud?
Uh oh, we got a case of compounding imagination! One thing leads to another and now we got a new train of developmental thought. I wasn't anticipating this in my original plans for this AWB but that's one of the wonders of world building; new things always pop up!
Let's nip this in the bud before it grows out of control or we forget about this interesting potential element.
We know that we want to increase air density on floating islands so let's assume for the time being that we will be successful in figuring that out in the near future. Under this assumption, the air is denser, much easier to breath and the surrounds a floating island like a warm blanket in the sky, trapping the heat that the island gives off from being warmed by the sun.
If this high-density air blanket didn't circulate outside air with inside air, the atmosphere around the floating island would eventually get stale and if anyone is there breathing, they would eventually run out of air. I think we can easily fix this little problem by considering the wind in the sky. The islands act like magnets, keeping the air close by but a little bit of windy force can blow the air around and away, getting rid of old air and replacing it with new, replenishing the proportions of different types of gas. (detail #6)
If an island passes through a cloud, much of the water vapor (the cloud) will linger around the island, getting caught in it's magnetic-ish effect. Depending on the strength of this effect, probably tied into island size, shape, and composition, the cloud will encase the island for some period of time. An island with a higher speed or an island facing strong winds may lose its surrounding cloud faster under these circumstances. (details #7 and 8)
Imagine being on the surface of Bob, spending a peaceful afternoon cloud-watching. Clouds would take on various forms and float on by. If you're in the right place at the right time, an island may drift by. But now with this new information, there could be an island sailing through the sky hidden in its very own cloud. On the ground, it might look like any other cloud but inside would be a small world hidden away for as long as the cloud shields it from prying eyes. (detail #9)
I think it's safe to say that this same air-density/cloud-catching effect would also apply to thunderstorms as well, making them worse than before for anyone stuck on an island. The storm would linger and have plenty more time to expend more of its electrical charge onto the island in the form of lighting. (detail #10)
Alright, I think that about covers that spontaneous burst of imagination. We'll get back on track in figuring out the mechanics of how floating islands float and why do they have their own little atmospheres in AWB #7. We did pretty good for today, one task complete and an incident of compounding imagination quelled with a net gain of ten more details of Bob. In another AWB or two, we'll be done with most of the foundation work for floating islands and then we can move on to more interesting topics concerning them.