(See Trionesse Region Alamanac for data for the immediate campaign area.)
The Almanac page provides an overview of how days and seasons work across the disc of the world. At first glance despite the fact that the Earth is a globe and Mithlond is a disc it might seem that the two would be broadly similar in terms of days and seasons. However, the Mithlond sun is far closer to the world than Earth's sun and this has a dramatic effect on the apparent size of the sun and solar intensity.
More on how the sun moves through the sky during the year here. This page focuses on the energy heating the entire disc through the year. For how the sun appears in the sky and temperatures for a specific location on the disc, see the Locations Page.
Total Energy Through the Course of the Year
The following pictures show you the total energy hitting the surface of the disc on the 12th day of each month throughout the first six months of the year. (Only the first six months because the next six months, look just like the first six months). Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image with a readable scale.
Alance 12 | Tross 12 | Marst 12 | Tonel 12 | Irince 12 | Chana 12 |
As you can see, even early in the year when the sun is low in the east, the eastern rim is still getting a lot of energy. This is because the sun is sailing just above the rim and is directly over those rim lands.
Another observation: while the east and west rim are hot at certain times of the year, the north and south rims are almost always hot. The only time they aren't hot is when the sun isn't rising above the rim mountains at all. Regardless of the time of year, the middle of the world is always far from the sun and never gets as warm as the rim.
The following yearly views may help you visualize this.
Total Energy over an Entire Year
The next plots show how the disc behaves summed over an entire year. For the yearly-total-energy view, for instance, the daily total energy is summed over the full year for each spot on the disc. Similar the temperature views report the total days of the year where the temperature is over 60 or the median temperature for that spot on the globe.
Yearly Maximum Temperature | Yearly Median Temperature | Number of Days over 60 degrees | Yearly Peak Power | Yearly Total Energy |
Interestingly, aside from a few perturbations due to the spine mountains and the southern polar mountains, the max temperature is simply a function of distance from the center of the world. If you are near the center, it is colder, near the edge, the hottest day of the year increases and is the same anywhere on the rim of the world.
However, if you look at the yearly total energy or the days over 60, it is clear that distance from rim is not all that the matters. Those places near the north and south poles are nearly always hot. The places on the rim in the east and west are just sometimes hot.
The yearly peak power plot follows the yearly max temp plot (naturally) but note that it is a logarithmic scale. I.e., it gets a lot hotter as you approach the rim.
The median temperature plot indicates that except for the poles, the typical temperature near the rim is actually fairly cool. This is because the days when the sun is low in the sky and near the rim are the hot days for those locations. The rest of the year, the sun is far away and for east and west rim spots, that is most of the time. The Locations Page shows this with views of the sun during the day and plots of temperature for specific places on the disc.
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