Yeah, honestly Edgar could write a mainstream geography book if he wanted to and it would go over pretty well! He's so good with visuals and pulling the essentials out of a lot of details
20-30 C in the UK (not sure how much that is in farenheit but, it's hot haha). Edit: 60-80 Fahrenheit apparently. Such a weather appropriate video we're all watching!
Question about the climate videos from two years ago: You said you were going to make more videos on climates for different planets (eg land ratio, day length, axial tilt), but you never did. How come? Was there not enough pre existing information to go off, or were they not interesting enough to make videos for?
Its really hard to model this. In fact only a few studies have been done and they often use super computers to do it. There was a study that simulated the climate on a desert world like Arrakis from Dune and it's basically hot but habitable around the equator and the polar regions would fluctuate between very high dry temperatures hotter than the Sahara in summer and colder than the Antarctic in winter.
Funnily enough, I just came back from a 3 day backpacking trip in the Sangre de Christo mountains, where glaciers were once super common and there are these huge glacially smoothed rocks and former icefalls everywhere.
I'm honestly impressed. I actually learned more about the glaciers that shaped the country I live in here then I did in school. And we *did* learn about this stuff in school.
I just love how this video is a french lesson for words you thought you'll never need. Congratulations folks, you now have your bilingual glacier's degree !
The next one will be exciting. I live in an area that used to have a lot of glacier cover. Between the great lakes which were carved by glaciers, and the Northern Appalachian mountains that are full of glacial erratic boulders, post glacial landscapes are some of my favorites.
This is really useful for me - and I'm guessing the next video will be too - because part of the lore of the homebrew D&D setting I'm developing is that thousands of years ago, one of the continents had an ice age that forced the dwarves and kobolds living there underground, and after the ice age ended, a bunch of nature spirits from another plane moved into the depopulated areas above ground and ended up becoming the gnomes, goblins, orcs, a couple of homebrew races, and more
Nice video, there is a lot of things I ignored that I didn't know. Just one observation: 07:17 Equatorial glaciers facing either N or S actually depend a lot on the planet's axis tilt. Here, in Colombia (~4° N), on Northern hemisphere summer the sun is approx. 19° northwards from zenith. On Northern hemisphere winter, though, it is approx. 27° southwards from zenith. Near equinoxes, it passed through zenith, so both North Face and South Face of high mountains can have glaciers.
My grandparents lived in Utah when they were alive, and they would always talk about the Mount Timpanogos glacier.. on I've never actually seen it, but I'm pretty sure that there is snow there all year around at least...
I love these videos as they're reminding me of a lot of stuff I studied in my Geology electives in college. I enjoyed those classes as a casual interest topic so it's nice to get a refresher in a context of fantasy/fiction world building, something else I also love.
Nice to hear about the next glacier part upcoming - that probably means fjords, and there's a bunch of fjords in one nation according to the map I commissioned. I'd definitely say that nation is the one I have the least grasp of currently/feels too alien. Here's hoping hearing some more on fjords helps with my writer's block. (Worldbuilder's block?)
Glaciers? Well, I always wanted to know about them anyways I have a question: Can glaciers form whem lots and lots of snow acumulate and are compressed by their own wheight?
Cant wait for my home state of Michigan to be brought up next video. No other place in the world will you find examples of the massive changes that retreating glaciers can make that are as apparent as the Great Lakes region.
So cool. Can't wait for the next one. I've been doing a lot of worldbuilding in a region just like what you describe the next vid will be about, and your vids are always my first stop before deeper research. So compact and concise -- that's he artifexian brand!! x)
So many of these words I haven’t heard before, and I keep having to look back at the video to see how they’re spelled. It would be neat to see a language of origin just to see a spattering of the cultures that intersect with glacial environments.
I always thought a series of concentric end moraines left by a shrinking piedmont glacier would make cool city walls (either through “modern” work or misinterpreted as belonging to an ancient civilization)
These numbers are a good ballpark figure if your world is almost exactly like Earth. Otherwise, there are a lot of factors that would influence the formation of ice, mostly depending on climate and topography. The climate is driven by solar insolation, obliquity, length of the year, and whether the landmasses are in a supercontinental epoch or not. During a supercontinent breakup cycle, there's a lot more volcanic activity, which means more CO₂ in the atmosphere, which means higher greenhouse effect and thus little or no ice (e.g. Earth during the Jurassic/Cretaceous). Sea levels are also higher as the oceanic crust floats higher on the mantle. The position of the landmasses also has an impact on ice formation: Antarctica is largely covered in ice because it is surrounded by the southern ocean which blocks warm currents. Once the initial glaciation started, it became a feedback loop. Conversely, there were areas in Siberia that remained ice-free during the last glacial maximum because weather patterns resulted in not enough precipitation falling to collect and form glaciers.
@@sparkieT88 This is mainly if your world is basically like earth. Otherwise its much more complicated and you might want to just wing it or bust out the super computer.
Is there any way to determine whether or not you'll even have glaciers just from ocean currents? I know it's speculated that the Earth's first (known) ice age may have been caused by a disruption in the currents between the north and south poles. And I know that some of it has to do with the luminosity of the star, so I'm just kinda curious, because I know Earth's relationship with glaciers has changed a lot over time. Looking forward to the next part of this, I've spent my whole life in a landscape dominated by the aftermath of glacial activity, so it'll be interesting to see what I recognize and what I don't.
Hi, glaciologist here. This is a great question! Knowing where your ocean currents are is definitely helpful for determining where your glaciers are going to be. The best way to think about it is to determine whether your ocean current is moving along lines of latitude (N/S) or longitude (E/W). When you have a current moving from the equator poleward, that current is going to bring a lot of water vapor with it. When that water vapor hits a landmass with high elevation, the water vapor rises adiabatically and falls as snow. This is the situation we see in Greenland. Longitudinal (E/W) currents can form glaciers in two scenarios. The coriolis effect generally forms a current around 30 degrees latitude between the Hadley and Ferrel cells. These currents move west to east on earth but would be east to west if your planet is rotating in the other direction. When these currents hit a continent, they also form glaciers (albeit smaller ones due to the lower latitude). We can see examples of this in the Andes or Sierras. Lastly, the largest ice sheets occur when you have a longitudinal current that can circumnavigate the entire planet. This is what we see with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This continuous circular current blocks warm air from passing further poleward and creates incredibly cold conditions at the poles. I hope this helps!
@@sleidmanWell, thank you for the detailed response. I kinda knew some of that, though not in that kind of depth. Random aside, for a bit there I'd misread your comment as saying you were a glaciobiologist, which sounded awesomely specific. Which isn't to discount the specificity of glaciology, still cool. But anyway, that wasn't quite what I was asking. It was more of a "Can ocean currents move such that, with no other changes, you have no glaciers at all, or glaciers covering most/all of the planet?" the answer to which I assume would still involve a lot of factors.
@@Great_Olaf5 I'm glad you're interested in glacial landscapes! I'm actually a glacial hydrologist but I have coworkers who are cryo-geobiologists. Science can get very specialized lol. There are definitely instances when sudden (in geologic timespans) changes in currents cause large changes in glaciation. Maybe the best example of this is the Younger Dryas period when flooding from the gigantic lake Agassiz caused a slowing of the north Atlantic deep water circulation and widespread glaciation. In extreme scenarios, this can cause glaciers to expand over a large portion of the planet such as what happened during the Snowball Earth period. Ocean current induced warming tends to be at longer scales since it generally requires shifts in tectonics that facilitates more efficient transfer of energy to the poles. That said, rapid naturally occurring warming from ocean currents have happened. For example, the formation of the Isthmus of Panama cut off cold fresher water from the Pacific leading to significantly warmer temperatures in the Atlantic.
Minor correction: polynyas aren't just formed by katabatic winds, but more typically by ocean currents preventing an area from remaining calm enough to begin freezing, and as such tend to reoccur every winter. Several in the Northern Hemisphere, most notably the North Water Polynya between Greenland and Canada, are considered critical wildlife areas as they provide refuges for marine animals that would otherwise be forced south because of ocean ice cover and a warmer microclimate because of the open water.
Also, if axial tilt is big and we go for some kind of habitable planet, the temperature at the poles may boil lakes in summer and freeze them in winter in fire desert climates, while oceans will keep quite stable between 5 ºC and 45 ºC, and if any glacial landscapes form, they'll be placed near the Equator.
Would it be possible to have a volcano submerged under a glacier that occasionally erupts causing a river of water and volcanic ashes to flow from the mouth of the glacier and would this cause the riverbanks to sometimes be very fertile after an eruption?
wow so much information. tbh, I'll probably never use this much realism in my worldbuilding, but I enjoy seeing what is out there (eg. didn't know Glacial oasis exist) and imagine where I could place something like that in my fantasy world.
Nice! My own planet (little Ea, "Our Second Chance") is quite colder and icier than Earth, but I've never gone into much detail about its glaciers. This will surely help!
Hey Artifexian, do you think you might be able to make a video about angular size? It could help people calculate how far away a celestial object is, and it's perceived largeness in the sky. This is especially helpful for those constructing moons or gas giant systems! Especially with all the math that goes into calculating the distances of objects relative to each other, and their orbits, it would be helpful to understand how everything would look in the sky of that particular world, and even how big the sun(s) looks like.
Currently, I'm finishing Left Hand of Darkness from Ursula K. le Guin, which takes place in a world under an Ice Age. In the book, "snow hurricanes" are described, which I thought it was a made up climatological effect. Now I can see I was mistaken. Le Guin surely made an extensive research for that book: it perfectly describes katabatic winds, glacier crevasses, snow fog and nunataks. It's interesting to see how much you can learn from a well-researched worldbuilding.
Question: if you have a really large mountain range around the size of or taller then Mount Everest, and this mountain was on or near the equator of the planet and had very hot and humid temperatures, would there be snow and ice on the mountain range and if yes, where would the snow and ice be. Also loved the video!
Hi, glaciologist here. The short answer is yes, there would most likely be snow and probably small glaciers as well. The long answer is that it's a little complicated and depends on how your world is set up. For example, if this mountain range is surrounded by a wide expanse of lowlands, water vapor is going to have a harder time reaching the mountains than if the mountains were closer to the ocean. This is why Kilimanjaro has fairly little snow despite it's size whereas the Himalayas with monsoon conditions, have lots of snow. Secondly, it depends on the rotation rate and tilt of your planet. A lower angle would allow for a smaller temperature gradient and therefore would make it more likely to have a snowy mountain range. A faster rotation would cause a greater Coriolis effect there keeping more water vapor (and therefore snow) to your mountains. Lastly, it depends on the composition of your atmosphere with a thicker atmosphere generally leading to warmer conditions and fewer snowy mountains. I hope this helps and best of luck with your world building!
@@sleidman if I could trouble you with a question. How do volcanos effect where mountain glaciers should be? Like for instance, I'm developing a region on an earth-like planet that is roughly centered around 33°N situated along a fault line. So I imagine there's active volcanos. Would that stop or deter glaciers from forming in mountains as high as roughly 8,500 ft? Forgot to mention, if it matters, it has a, generally speaking, subtropical climate and is about the size of new york state or ancient Greece, though it's taller than it is wide (the region).
@@TheDcraft Great question. It really depends in the type of volcano and how active it is. Shield volcanos (shallow sloping volcanoes formed from low viscosity lava like those found in Hawaii) rarely have glaciers. Strato volcanoes (cone shaped volcanoes from more viscous lava like those found in the Cascade Range) often do have glaciers if they are large enough although they are limited to just flowing the base of the mountain. These volcanoes can often form debris flows (large floods of mud when rain falls on snow eroding large hillslopes). Maybe the best example of glaciers on volcanoes can be seen in Iceland. The high latitude and heavy snowfalls allows for the growth of an ice cap (very large glacier) on top of the volcano. When the volcano erupts, it melts the glacier causing a humongous flood know as a jokulhlaup. Glaciers can even form on the side of open lava pit volcanoes, for example, Mt. Erebus in Antarctica. Steam from this volcano causes extensive networks of ice caves on the side of the mountain. Also, something to consider is that volcano eruptions cool the planet overall. The eruption of Mt Pinatubo caused global temperatures to drop 0.6C. The eruption of the Siberian Traps flood basalt, most likely the largest volcanic eruption in Earth's history, cooled the planet enough to lead the climate into an ice age and cause a mass extinction. I hope this helps and makes things clearer for ypur world building!
Lovely video as always, keep up the great content. Your videos helped developing my world immensely, can‘t wait for the one on post-glacial landscapes! :)
Lol I feel like whenever I think about the geography of my fantasy world and I’m stuck on something, Artifexian pops up in my recommended with exactly what I need!
Hi Artifexian, I've recently come across your channel and have been binge-watching the planet formation parts for the sake of a D&D map. I'm particularly grateful for the tutorials on your tools, like Gplates. I was just wondering, you have a few videos on tectonic plates, plate movement, continents etc, but the examples tend to feature either Earth or other maps of your own that have a mid-oceanic ridge running pole to pole. Do you think it would be possible, scientifically speaking, to have one that goes East to West? Or if anyone else passes by here, is there any more or less scientifically-backed conjecture you can make that could tell me if this might be possible or absolutely not? According to what I know I don't think it should be a big problem, but I'm not an expert, and you know a lot more about it.
Can you do a video on ground surface age and type/geology, as well as crust damage caused by things like hundreds of millions or billions of years of cratering?
hey, at 7:15 you talk about how mt.glaciers do not appear in areas of rainshadow. What about continental glaciers? I have a world with a big continent over one pole and according to my windpatterns etc. that area only gets minimal snowfall in some edges. Should there be a a big polar icecap there? I heard that in some areas of siberia during the last iceages there were no glaciers precisely due to such a lack of precipitation reaching them. Therefor I tend to say no, apart from some "fossil" icecap remains stemming from far bygone past times with more water in that area, but I am not quite sure about my judgement.
Only after watching and listening to your stuff for, like, a year, I noticed that I genuinely have no idea what “Edgar out” means. Is it an assertion that Edgar is, in fact, out? Or is it rather an imperative telling the audience that Edgaring out is class and everyone should Edgar out as much as they can, as I’ve always parsed it? Also, I, obviously, completely agree with the second statement. Long live Artifexia!
Do you have a video planned for handling a polar ice cap that isn't over a continent? My world does not have polar landmasses, so both of the poles have essentially a massive iceberg over them, so I would like some insight as to the implications of these on the rest of the world, if possible.
Hi, glaciologist here. This is a great quest!. Technically, an ice mass that forms over an ocean would be sea ice, not an iceberg. Icebergs always come from marine terminating glaciers. That said, you can still have some really interesting formations occur in sea ice, especially if that sea ice is thick enough to stick around through the summer. Sea ice moves are large plates due to wind and ocean currents. When these plates collide, they can form large pressure ridges. When they drift apart, they form polynyas which tend to be highly productive ecosystems. Large sea ice expanses can also have large impacts on the climate of your world. Sea ice reflects far more light than ocean water therefore worlds with large sea ice expanses generally have fairly stable cold climates. Sea ice also limits evaporation which can lead to surrounding regions being drier than if they were near open oceans. I hope this helps! Best of luck world building#
Yo, I literally suggested this video on one of the last ones I watched!! Do you read minds, I rly needed this for my current worldbuilding project, rly good video!
I don't know if this question will ever get answered but... What happens if a hot spot (like Hawaii Island Chain) formed under the Shara Desert? Whats happens if it forms under Antarctica?
Is it wrong that I already knew Katabatic winds from Dyatlov incident? Also how high would it need to snow in the equator? Because Mt Chimborazo seems like the only mountain which can hold snow permanently. Kilimanjaro and Puncak Jaya despite its height seems to not have any glacier too, I think?
7:07 - not sure what this graph represents, or why is the glacier formation height lower near the equator than in some of the higher latitudes. Is there a reason for it to be a general rule or more of a coincidence on present-day Earth (due to where the continents happen to be at this point in history or something)?
my fantasy world is a planet 20 times bigger than earth with 6 habitable moons that the native creatures call smaller planets but one issue the most common gas there are sulfur hexafluoride and purfluorobutane very heavy gases so the atmosphere is very hot making it less likely for glaciers to be there i had to make it that the winters get really cold from the native species having crews of flyers to clean out the atmosphere
Something i wanted to ask about the costal formations is does something similar happen with lakes? Is there any unique or interesting formations were lakes meets the land? If anyone in the comments know i’d love to know :3
Question... My planet has no appreciable landmass in the north of 60. The south pole has an antarctica analogue. With nothing for the northern ice sheet to grip onto, I can see it spinning with the arctic ocean current. If I am not wrong on this, how would this affect an ice age?
so i really want to figure out if its possible to create a simulation that attempts to create a realistic and accurate solar system, planet, and ecosystem using the information from artifexian videos. to the point of telling you what types of sediment and compounds would form in certain areas. anyone have ideas?
I'm trying to find that channel you colab'd with to help him craft a planet, that he went on to describe the complete evolution of the animals upon. I couldn't find a video referencing it on your videos, can you help me find him again? i also couldn't find his channel in my subscription list.
ua-cam.com/channels/MjTcpv56G_W0FRIdPHBn4A.html I managed to find his channel with a quick search, I was not expecting "planet evoulution" to turn up his latest video in the first 10 reasults. but Biblaridian is now subscribed, so mrah. I'll leave this hear in case others want to find his channel also.
I don't care about building fantasy worlds but this channel is a great geography channel and I can check the games I play against this knowledge =P
Yeah, honestly Edgar could write a mainstream geography book if he wanted to and it would go over pretty well! He's so good with visuals and pulling the essentials out of a lot of details
Btw there is a mistake in the video mountain glaciers does not form in cirques or hanging valleys they are forming them due to erosion
Ah, yes. Learning about glaciers while it’s summer where i live.
*laughs in tropical island
Mountain glaciers tend to have year round snow packs. You can watch it grow and recede over the seasons.
20-30 C in the UK (not sure how much that is in farenheit but, it's hot haha).
Edit: 60-80 Fahrenheit apparently. Such a weather appropriate video we're all watching!
@@scptime1188 68-86f
@@yoironfistbro8128 To be precise.
This topic has always been confusing and hard to build for me and so I am glad you are now tackling this subject!
Same.I was actually reluctant to place an ice age in my world but now I will give it a try.
Hello giant frost worms, welcome to your accurately designed environ.
environ
Question about the climate videos from two years ago: You said you were going to make more videos on climates for different planets (eg land ratio, day length, axial tilt), but you never did. How come? Was there not enough pre existing information to go off, or were they not interesting enough to make videos for?
Underrated comment...ques..tion?
also you said that was 2 years ago, so he probably forgot.
@@Bananappleboy he may well be still making the video if the information is confusing enough
He might've forgot!
Its really hard to model this. In fact only a few studies have been done and they often use super computers to do it. There was a study that simulated the climate on a desert world like Arrakis from Dune and it's basically hot but habitable around the equator and the polar regions would fluctuate between very high dry temperatures hotter than the Sahara in summer and colder than the Antarctic in winter.
Funnily enough, I just came back from a 3 day backpacking trip in the Sangre de Christo mountains, where glaciers were once super common and there are these huge glacially smoothed rocks and former icefalls everywhere.
0:00 - intro
0:11 - glacier types
0:28 - Mountain glaciers
3:23 - Continental glaciers
5:51 - glacier placement
8:21 - Outro & sponsor
I'm honestly impressed.
I actually learned more about the glaciers that shaped the country I live in here then I did in school.
And we *did* learn about this stuff in school.
I just love how this video is a french lesson for words you thought you'll never need. Congratulations folks, you now have your bilingual glacier's degree !
This video is perfectly timed for me. The world I'm building has had a lore important ice age. Can't wait for the next video
The next one will be exciting. I live in an area that used to have a lot of glacier cover. Between the great lakes which were carved by glaciers, and the Northern Appalachian mountains that are full of glacial erratic boulders, post glacial landscapes are some of my favorites.
This is really useful for me - and I'm guessing the next video will be too - because part of the lore of the homebrew D&D setting I'm developing is that thousands of years ago, one of the continents had an ice age that forced the dwarves and kobolds living there underground, and after the ice age ended, a bunch of nature spirits from another plane moved into the depopulated areas above ground and ended up becoming the gnomes, goblins, orcs, a couple of homebrew races, and more
Ooh! Have you talked about permafrost? I was wondering about how to place it in my worlds!
I was a fan before I saw this video, but after watching it, I became an entire glacier!
Nice video, there is a lot of things I ignored that I didn't know. Just one observation:
07:17 Equatorial glaciers facing either N or S actually depend a lot on the planet's axis tilt. Here, in Colombia (~4° N), on Northern hemisphere summer the sun is approx. 19° northwards from zenith. On Northern hemisphere winter, though, it is approx. 27° southwards from zenith. Near equinoxes, it passed through zenith, so both North Face and South Face of high mountains can have glaciers.
My grandparents lived in Utah when they were alive, and they would always talk about the Mount Timpanogos glacier.. on I've never actually seen it, but I'm pretty sure that there is snow there all year around at least...
I love these videos as they're reminding me of a lot of stuff I studied in my Geology electives in college. I enjoyed those classes as a casual interest topic so it's nice to get a refresher in a context of fantasy/fiction world building, something else I also love.
No idea why this is in my recommended but I’m fully supportive of this
Nice to hear about the next glacier part upcoming - that probably means fjords, and there's a bunch of fjords in one nation according to the map I commissioned. I'd definitely say that nation is the one I have the least grasp of currently/feels too alien. Here's hoping hearing some more on fjords helps with my writer's block. (Worldbuilder's block?)
Norway is full of fjords!
That's a good place to look into regarding them.
@@Ratchet4647 too many, they need to share
Finally, worldbuilding episode!
Glaciers? Well, I always wanted to know about them anyways
I have a question: Can glaciers form whem lots and lots of snow acumulate and are compressed by their own wheight?
That’s literally how glaciers form. Snow piles up and up until it’s a solid thing of ice and snow
@@niety5914 thank you
Cant wait for my home state of Michigan to be brought up next video. No other place in the world will you find examples of the massive changes that retreating glaciers can make that are as apparent as the Great Lakes region.
I always found it interesting to imagine tropical fjords
yooo i was just wondering about how to glaciate my world. Big ups to my man edgar
So cool. Can't wait for the next one. I've been doing a lot of worldbuilding in a region just like what you describe the next vid will be about, and your vids are always my first stop before deeper research. So compact and concise -- that's he artifexian brand!! x)
So many of these words I haven’t heard before, and I keep having to look back at the video to see how they’re spelled. It would be neat to see a language of origin just to see a spattering of the cultures that intersect with glacial environments.
This is great! I was waiting for this video :D I was kind of hoping for some non-earth-like planet glacier info, but I can see that being problematic
Love the video! Any plans on making a video on the “consequences” of glaciers? Things like glacial scarring, moraine islands etc?
I always thought a series of concentric end moraines left by a shrinking piedmont glacier would make cool city walls (either through “modern” work or misinterpreted as belonging to an ancient civilization)
This'll be fun for writing historical fiction in about 20 years.
Nice, too bad my world is modeled after the Eocene epoch, so no permanent ice.
Not even mountain glaciers? Even during greenhouse climatic episodes mountain glaciers can exist.
Sounds like you should add a high mountain plateau near the pole
@@ProfezorSnayp we all know mountains were made by big tunnel in 1800 to sell more tunnels
*Sharp intake of breath* HE'S BACK!
Are these numbers fairly constant on other planets, such as the mars ice caps, or is that driven more by the amount of available water?
Aren't the Martian caps mostly made up of dry ice (frozen CO2)?
@@TheZetaKai yeah maybe not the best example, but formation wise, isnt based on elevation and polar circles which are full dark areas in winter.
These numbers are a good ballpark figure if your world is almost exactly like Earth. Otherwise, there are a lot of factors that would influence the formation of ice, mostly depending on climate and topography. The climate is driven by solar insolation, obliquity, length of the year, and whether the landmasses are in a supercontinental epoch or not.
During a supercontinent breakup cycle, there's a lot more volcanic activity, which means more CO₂ in the atmosphere, which means higher greenhouse effect and thus little or no ice (e.g. Earth during the Jurassic/Cretaceous). Sea levels are also higher as the oceanic crust floats higher on the mantle.
The position of the landmasses also has an impact on ice formation: Antarctica is largely covered in ice because it is surrounded by the southern ocean which blocks warm currents. Once the initial glaciation started, it became a feedback loop. Conversely, there were areas in Siberia that remained ice-free during the last glacial maximum because weather patterns resulted in not enough precipitation falling to collect and form glaciers.
@@sparkieT88 This is mainly if your world is basically like earth. Otherwise its much more complicated and you might want to just wing it or bust out the super computer.
This video came right on time, before my trip to iceland (:
That was excellent. Also very information dense. You compressed that down very well.
Awesome video, this will help me with Mtn. elevations. One question though, if I can, does volcanism effect this?
Is there any way to determine whether or not you'll even have glaciers just from ocean currents? I know it's speculated that the Earth's first (known) ice age may have been caused by a disruption in the currents between the north and south poles. And I know that some of it has to do with the luminosity of the star, so I'm just kinda curious, because I know Earth's relationship with glaciers has changed a lot over time.
Looking forward to the next part of this, I've spent my whole life in a landscape dominated by the aftermath of glacial activity, so it'll be interesting to see what I recognize and what I don't.
Hi, glaciologist here. This is a great question! Knowing where your ocean currents are is definitely helpful for determining where your glaciers are going to be. The best way to think about it is to determine whether your ocean current is moving along lines of latitude (N/S) or longitude (E/W). When you have a current moving from the equator poleward, that current is going to bring a lot of water vapor with it. When that water vapor hits a landmass with high elevation, the water vapor rises adiabatically and falls as snow. This is the situation we see in Greenland. Longitudinal (E/W) currents can form glaciers in two scenarios. The coriolis effect generally forms a current around 30 degrees latitude between the Hadley and Ferrel cells. These currents move west to east on earth but would be east to west if your planet is rotating in the other direction. When these currents hit a continent, they also form glaciers (albeit smaller ones due to the lower latitude). We can see examples of this in the Andes or Sierras. Lastly, the largest ice sheets occur when you have a longitudinal current that can circumnavigate the entire planet. This is what we see with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This continuous circular current blocks warm air from passing further poleward and creates incredibly cold conditions at the poles. I hope this helps!
@@sleidmanWell, thank you for the detailed response. I kinda knew some of that, though not in that kind of depth.
Random aside, for a bit there I'd misread your comment as saying you were a glaciobiologist, which sounded awesomely specific. Which isn't to discount the specificity of glaciology, still cool.
But anyway, that wasn't quite what I was asking. It was more of a "Can ocean currents move such that, with no other changes, you have no glaciers at all, or glaciers covering most/all of the planet?" the answer to which I assume would still involve a lot of factors.
@@Great_Olaf5 I'm glad you're interested in glacial landscapes! I'm actually a glacial hydrologist but I have coworkers who are cryo-geobiologists. Science can get very specialized lol.
There are definitely instances when sudden (in geologic timespans) changes in currents cause large changes in glaciation. Maybe the best example of this is the Younger Dryas period when flooding from the gigantic lake Agassiz caused a slowing of the north Atlantic deep water circulation and widespread glaciation. In extreme scenarios, this can cause glaciers to expand over a large portion of the planet such as what happened during the Snowball Earth period. Ocean current induced warming tends to be at longer scales since it generally requires shifts in tectonics that facilitates more efficient transfer of energy to the poles. That said, rapid naturally occurring warming from ocean currents have happened. For example, the formation of the Isthmus of Panama cut off cold fresher water from the Pacific leading to significantly warmer temperatures in the Atlantic.
@@sleidman That is more like what I was looking for, thank you.
Been waiting for this one, glad it came way sooner than I thought!
Minor correction: polynyas aren't just formed by katabatic winds, but more typically by ocean currents preventing an area from remaining calm enough to begin freezing, and as such tend to reoccur every winter. Several in the Northern Hemisphere, most notably the North Water Polynya between Greenland and Canada, are considered critical wildlife areas as they provide refuges for marine animals that would otherwise be forced south because of ocean ice cover and a warmer microclimate because of the open water.
Nice! Now you've done all of my Paper 1 GCSE thanks
aw yis, im ready to hear about post-glacial lakes and fjords next video
Also, if axial tilt is big and we go for some kind of habitable planet, the temperature at the poles may boil lakes in summer and freeze them in winter in fire desert climates, while oceans will keep quite stable between 5 ºC and 45 ºC, and if any glacial landscapes form, they'll be placed near the Equator.
One of my new favorites of your videos! Looking forward to the next one!
Would it be possible to have a volcano submerged under a glacier that occasionally erupts causing a river of water and volcanic ashes to flow from the mouth of the glacier and would this cause the riverbanks to sometimes be very fertile after an eruption?
wow so much information.
tbh, I'll probably never use this much realism in my worldbuilding, but I enjoy seeing what is out there (eg. didn't know Glacial oasis exist) and imagine where I could place something like that in my fantasy world.
Nice! My own planet (little Ea, "Our Second Chance") is quite colder and icier than Earth, but I've never gone into much detail about its glaciers. This will surely help!
Love all of your videos
Hey Artifexian, do you think you might be able to make a video about angular size? It could help people calculate how far away a celestial object is, and it's perceived largeness in the sky. This is especially helpful for those constructing moons or gas giant systems! Especially with all the math that goes into calculating the distances of objects relative to each other, and their orbits, it would be helpful to understand how everything would look in the sky of that particular world, and even how big the sun(s) looks like.
Currently, I'm finishing Left Hand of Darkness from Ursula K. le Guin, which takes place in a world under an Ice Age. In the book, "snow hurricanes" are described, which I thought it was a made up climatological effect. Now I can see I was mistaken. Le Guin surely made an extensive research for that book: it perfectly describes katabatic winds, glacier crevasses, snow fog and nunataks. It's interesting to see how much you can learn from a well-researched worldbuilding.
Hello from Vegas. Watching this video to cool off.
Question: if you have a really large mountain range around the size of or taller then Mount Everest, and this mountain was on or near the equator of the planet and had very hot and humid temperatures, would there be snow and ice on the mountain range and if yes, where would the snow and ice be.
Also loved the video!
Yes. Mount Kilimanjaro is a good real life example of this.
Hi, glaciologist here. The short answer is yes, there would most likely be snow and probably small glaciers as well. The long answer is that it's a little complicated and depends on how your world is set up. For example, if this mountain range is surrounded by a wide expanse of lowlands, water vapor is going to have a harder time reaching the mountains than if the mountains were closer to the ocean. This is why Kilimanjaro has fairly little snow despite it's size whereas the Himalayas with monsoon conditions, have lots of snow. Secondly, it depends on the rotation rate and tilt of your planet. A lower angle would allow for a smaller temperature gradient and therefore would make it more likely to have a snowy mountain range. A faster rotation would cause a greater Coriolis effect there keeping more water vapor (and therefore snow) to your mountains. Lastly, it depends on the composition of your atmosphere with a thicker atmosphere generally leading to warmer conditions and fewer snowy mountains. I hope this helps and best of luck with your world building!
@@sleidman if I could trouble you with a question.
How do volcanos effect where mountain glaciers should be?
Like for instance, I'm developing a region on an earth-like planet that is roughly centered around 33°N situated along a fault line. So I imagine there's active volcanos. Would that stop or deter glaciers from forming in mountains as high as roughly 8,500 ft?
Forgot to mention, if it matters, it has a, generally speaking, subtropical climate and is about the size of new york state or ancient Greece, though it's taller than it is wide (the region).
@@TheDcraft Great question. It really depends in the type of volcano and how active it is. Shield volcanos (shallow sloping volcanoes formed from low viscosity lava like those found in Hawaii) rarely have glaciers. Strato volcanoes (cone shaped volcanoes from more viscous lava like those found in the Cascade Range) often do have glaciers if they are large enough although they are limited to just flowing the base of the mountain. These volcanoes can often form debris flows (large floods of mud when rain falls on snow eroding large hillslopes). Maybe the best example of glaciers on volcanoes can be seen in Iceland. The high latitude and heavy snowfalls allows for the growth of an ice cap (very large glacier) on top of the volcano. When the volcano erupts, it melts the glacier causing a humongous flood know as a jokulhlaup. Glaciers can even form on the side of open lava pit volcanoes, for example, Mt. Erebus in Antarctica. Steam from this volcano causes extensive networks of ice caves on the side of the mountain. Also, something to consider is that volcano eruptions cool the planet overall. The eruption of Mt Pinatubo caused global temperatures to drop 0.6C. The eruption of the Siberian Traps flood basalt, most likely the largest volcanic eruption in Earth's history, cooled the planet enough to lead the climate into an ice age and cause a mass extinction. I hope this helps and makes things clearer for ypur world building!
@@sleidman thank you so much 🙏😊😊
Lovely video as always, keep up the great content. Your videos helped developing my world immensely, can‘t wait for the one on post-glacial landscapes! :)
Not surprised at the phonology of most wordes involved in classifying and describing glaciers.
ive been wanting to create a great lskes region but noy known how, so hopefuly this video and the next one will help ne
Lol I feel like whenever I think about the geography of my fantasy world and I’m stuck on something, Artifexian pops up in my recommended with exactly what I need!
My favorite kind of content
Imagine having a village underneath a looming hanging glacier
Meanwhile, I am still waiting for the different land-ocean ratio climates video
Honestly…
Yeah.
If the ratio (in land:ocean) is 1:0, it’s dry. If it’s 0:1, it’s wet
@@teathesilkwing7616 thank you mr helpful
Hi Artifexian, I've recently come across your channel and have been binge-watching the planet formation parts for the sake of a D&D map. I'm particularly grateful for the tutorials on your tools, like Gplates. I was just wondering, you have a few videos on tectonic plates, plate movement, continents etc, but the examples tend to feature either Earth or other maps of your own that have a mid-oceanic ridge running pole to pole. Do you think it would be possible, scientifically speaking, to have one that goes East to West? Or if anyone else passes by here, is there any more or less scientifically-backed conjecture you can make that could tell me if this might be possible or absolutely not? According to what I know I don't think it should be a big problem, but I'm not an expert, and you know a lot more about it.
Can you please do eclipse videos and angles and apo/periapsis of moons calculation video
This genuinely helped me to cope with the current UK heatwave.
Great video! Thanks so much! Gotta go see about my map and check out if I have any glacial areas.
Great video, but you should have mentioned surging glaciers. They are really cool, but not always understood very well.
Can you do a video on ground surface age and type/geology, as well as crust damage caused by things like hundreds of millions or billions of years of cratering?
Happy Artifexian Upload everyone!
5:36 aye that's my small island nation 😂🇯🇲
great content as always
Don’t mind me just losing my mind over Edgar calling the end of a glacier the snout
Would you make a video talking about realistic technological development, in the future?
Awesome video.
hey, at 7:15 you talk about how mt.glaciers do not appear in areas of rainshadow. What about continental glaciers?
I have a world with a big continent over one pole and according to my windpatterns etc. that area only gets minimal snowfall in some edges. Should there be a a big polar icecap there? I heard that in some areas of siberia during the last iceages there were no glaciers precisely due to such a lack of precipitation reaching them. Therefor I tend to say no, apart from some "fossil" icecap remains stemming from far bygone past times with more water in that area, but I am not quite sure about my judgement.
Omg yes I've wanted this so bad
Only after watching and listening to your stuff for, like, a year, I noticed that I genuinely have no idea what “Edgar out” means. Is it an assertion that Edgar is, in fact, out? Or is it rather an imperative telling the audience that Edgaring out is class and everyone should Edgar out as much as they can, as I’ve always parsed it?
Also, I, obviously, completely agree with the second statement. Long live Artifexia!
Do you have a video planned for handling a polar ice cap that isn't over a continent? My world does not have polar landmasses, so both of the poles have essentially a massive iceberg over them, so I would like some insight as to the implications of these on the rest of the world, if possible.
Hi, glaciologist here. This is a great quest!. Technically, an ice mass that forms over an ocean would be sea ice, not an iceberg. Icebergs always come from marine terminating glaciers. That said, you can still have some really interesting formations occur in sea ice, especially if that sea ice is thick enough to stick around through the summer. Sea ice moves are large plates due to wind and ocean currents. When these plates collide, they can form large pressure ridges. When they drift apart, they form polynyas which tend to be highly productive ecosystems. Large sea ice expanses can also have large impacts on the climate of your world. Sea ice reflects far more light than ocean water therefore worlds with large sea ice expanses generally have fairly stable cold climates. Sea ice also limits evaporation which can lead to surrounding regions being drier than if they were near open oceans. I hope this helps! Best of luck world building#
I think one of the things people forget the most when world building is to build the actual physical world.
Great stuff!
Yeah! New video
Yo, I literally suggested this video on one of the last ones I watched!! Do you read minds, I rly needed this for my current worldbuilding project, rly good video!
You should do a gas giant colors video, kinda like the atmosphere colors video.
Glacier (N.) - one who glacies.
I don't know if this question will ever get answered but...
What happens if a hot spot (like Hawaii Island Chain) formed under the Shara Desert?
Whats happens if it forms under Antarctica?
HE'S BAAAAACKKK!!!
Is it wrong that I already knew Katabatic winds from Dyatlov incident?
Also how high would it need to snow in the equator? Because Mt Chimborazo seems like the only mountain which can hold snow permanently. Kilimanjaro and Puncak Jaya despite its height seems to not have any glacier too, I think?
I was wondering when we'd get another Artifexian worldbuild. Guess we'll be back here in two weeks, eh?
7:07 - not sure what this graph represents, or why is the glacier formation height lower near the equator than in some of the higher latitudes. Is there a reason for it to be a general rule or more of a coincidence on present-day Earth (due to where the continents happen to be at this point in history or something)?
my fantasy world is a planet 20 times bigger than earth with 6 habitable moons that the native creatures call smaller planets
but one issue the most common gas there are sulfur hexafluoride and purfluorobutane very heavy gases so the atmosphere is very hot making it less likely for glaciers to be there i had to make it that the winters get really cold from the native species having crews of flyers to clean out the atmosphere
This will be an important historical document in a few years
Something i wanted to ask about the costal formations is does something similar happen with lakes?
Is there any unique or interesting formations were lakes meets the land?
If anyone in the comments know i’d love to know :3
7:08 and explanation as to what this visual means would be nice. Why is there no white at 20-25 degrees north?
I think it's because actual Earth doesn't have any mountains that high in those latitudes.
Question...
My planet has no appreciable landmass in the north of 60. The south pole has an antarctica analogue. With nothing for the northern ice sheet to grip onto, I can see it spinning with the arctic ocean current. If I am not wrong on this, how would this affect an ice age?
Make a vid on a civilization living INSIDE a glacier 😎
I didn't knew English had borrowed so much french words to talk about moutains
I live by what used to be a continental Glacier not surprising because I live next to the great lakes but yah
Hello mr. Artifexian I have a question. Do you think we can work on making a planet together?🧐
bibbidi bobbidi boo here's interaction for you!
soooo will south american Paramos be in the next video then ? ? ? ? ?
There is a mistake in the video mountain glaciers does not form in cirques or hanging valleys they are forming them due to erosion
so i really want to figure out if its possible to create a simulation that attempts to create a realistic and accurate solar system, planet, and ecosystem using the information from artifexian videos. to the point of telling you what types of sediment and compounds would form in certain areas. anyone have ideas?
How are inland seas formed?
Can be glaciers diferent color?
I'm trying to find that channel you colab'd with to help him craft a planet, that he went on to describe the complete evolution of the animals upon. I couldn't find a video referencing it on your videos, can you help me find him again? i also couldn't find his channel in my subscription list.
ua-cam.com/channels/MjTcpv56G_W0FRIdPHBn4A.html I managed to find his channel with a quick search, I was not expecting "planet evoulution" to turn up his latest video in the first 10 reasults. but Biblaridian is now subscribed, so mrah. I'll leave this hear in case others want to find his channel also.