Climate system of a flat world under a dome
I posted this originally in r/worldbuilding looking for feedback, so that is why it is formated this way.
I've been thinking about a story and worldbuilding for it. My idea was to have it set in a world with a cosmology similar to ancients views about the world. It is a flat world, inside a dome, surrounded by a primordial ocean.
I am not an expert on climate, and this arrangement is not very realistic to begin with, but I still would like to have it make sense. What are some things that I should have considered?
First is, if it goes inside the dome, or on the outside. Having it on the outside of a magical barrier will handwave away the problems of having a continuous fusion explosion inside the atmosphere, however I don’t want to go with this option. It isn’t as cool as being able to reach the sun, or having it cross the magical barrier, letting in a bit of steam, from evaporating the ocean.
In the case of the sun passing inside, it will warm the air around it, not just the ground below, so real world wind patterns might not apply. Most of the warm air would already be around the sun, so I could move less, but since the ground below is still being warmed, wind might arise. The primordial ocean will cool down the air, making it rain the most, not at the equator, but on the sides of it. Eventually it will be deflected downward at the edge, with the remaining moisture freezing out of it as snow or frost on the ground and the sides of the dome.
The wind would also change with the time of day, since the air would be the warmest in drastically different places, compared to the real world. I imagine this would make some very strong winds, and storms.
Seasons on a flat world won’t happen, if the path or the output of the sun doesn’t change. I decided on making the path change, having it always enter and exit the world at the same positions, but traveling north/south of the equator, being above, (and also closer to the ground) different places at different points of the year.
Specific things about the my world:
From this point, it is about my setting specifically, not related to flat earth climate.
It is a post apocalyptic world with magic and technology intertwined. Society used to be advanced, but the release of harmful gases has caused the firmament of the sky to weaken, and leak salt water all over the land. This caused a collapse of the biosphere and agriculture, forcing people to grow crops and live inside sealed greenhouses. The world didn’t become completely barren, as salt tolerant plants and animals could easily colonise inland, after the downpour has weakened to periodical drizzle.
There are many people groups around the world, scavenging the ruins of the old world. Most of them live in disconnected villages and towns, rarely forming confederations. An exception to this is an empire, growing on the northern plains, conquering, enslaving and integrating others.
Society in the northern half of the world is centered around their cargo cult. The leaders of settlements are “priests” who have knowledge of the operation on ancient machinery, and religious rituals. Sometimes, the position of priest and civil leaders separate. In this case, the priest retains the roles related to their knowledge mentioned above, while the civil leader keeps order, upholds laws, and leads the militia.
In larger settlements, like the empire, there are multiple positions of priest, which specialise in different areas, having expertise comparable to pre-apocalyptic scientists. In the empire, exists a class of high priests, who are administrators of the imperial bureaucracy. They oversee departments related to their expertise. The priests of the empire act as a civil authority, with a hierarchy parallel to the military. They both answer to the king, but not each other, regularly causing infinity and uncertainty due to conflicting chains of command.
The king of the empire is an absolute monarch, with titles as long and over the top as ancient monarchs.
Central mountain: In the middle of the world is a mountain, whose peak reaches far into the sky. It is covered in ruins, more ancient than the rest of the world.
Eastern and western lands: Where the sun's path crosses the firmament, it scorches the land below. It also bathes them in hot rain, because when it crosses the firmament, it lets in water, which boils due to the heat of the sun. It then rains down on a landscape, where only extremophiles can live.
Poles: The lands farthest from the suns path are always frozen. So cold in fact, that the moisture of the air freezes into a wall of ice, covering the foot of the firmament.
Magic and technology (mostly the latter) work together in an interesting way. People use old technology like fusion powered hovercraft and microchip manufacturing machinery, but also hunt and scavenge with low level technology. They fight with spears and railguns, on foot, riding animals, or while speeding on hovercraft.
Most advanced machinery and their cities are usually powered by small fusion cores. They take in air, or water, and fuse it until they get iron, which they have to remove with specialized machinery. These cores are magical in origin, and can only be created, by taking off small chunks of a larger core, and growing them. Old technology is usually copied, without understanding, which has the side effect of keeping a backdoor to controlling the machine through the core. (plot relevant)
The world exists surrounded by the primordial ocean, which is kept out of the world by the firmament, the magical barrier of the sky. It is connected to the oceans inside of the world, through caves, in the foundation.
Two large celestial objects are found in the world. The sun, which warms the world, and keeps eldritch horrors away, that would consume the world, and the moon, which orbits outside of the firmament. The stars are giant beings, swimming mostly in unison. There are stars that don’t swim with the rest, but on complex paths (planet analogs). These are brighter and larger beings that are closer to deities. They involve themselves with mortals, preventing them from destroying themselves.
Story: I started building this world as a setting for a story I might write down. The short version is, that a couple near the polar regions can’t conceive, but a wandering star gives them a daughter of her own to raise. They hide it from others and the child, but her supernatural powers start manifesting. By this time the mother died, so the father takes the child on a journey under the pretense of finding a teacher for her. They run bandits, the empire, and the wandering star, until the daughter inevitably finds out her true origin, and joins her mother.
TLDR.: If the sun is inside the dome above a flat earth, and the dome is cold, the equator is dry, but north and south of it is wet. The winds are strong and follow the path of the sun. After that is more specific worldbuilding for my setting.
stormborns
dailybridgerton
izzy806
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