[part 1) Hey! So, I don't know if this is the right blog for me to ask this question (it's geography-related) but there is this part of a world I'm trying to build that consists of a few countries, which roughly look like this: The "main country" (where the story mostly takes place) has a sea on its west side, a wide mountain range on its east side, and a mountain chain on its north side, which connects a smaller "secondary" country to the mainland (sort of like Italy or India?). (...)
The main country has an oceanic climate which gets progressively more mediterranean as you head south and east, and it has multiple rivers. The secondary country has a colder oceanic climate than the main country. Both countries have cliff coasts and I want to add a (dead) volcano somewhere along the mountain chain between the two countries. My question is, is this geographically plausible?
I can't immediately think of any reason why it wouldn't be. If prevailing winds and ocean currents bring warmer air and water up from the southeast, that can give the main country its Mediterranean climate. The warm air would be cooled when flowing over the northern mountains toward the second country, and depending on how big these mountains are, possibly do something called the rain shadow effect, if you want some climate terms to look up for research. You can tweak the ocean and air currents to make all your desired climates sound plausible.Look at maps of Earth's air and ocean currents to get an idea of how they interact with landmasses.For visualising wind patterns, windytv.com and ventusky.com are fun. They both offer the same things but the UI and appearance are a bit different. They let you see the windflow on Earth at various altitudes, and also show temperature, precipitation, cloud cover and air pressure, among other options. They're fun to play with and kind of soothing to just sit back and watch the colours swirl around, but also educational because you can see how things like coastlines affect prevailing current direction.https://www.ventusky.comhttps://www.windytv.com
The volcano is also absolutely plausible. Mountain ranges form where tectonic plates smash together. Volcanoes also form there. I think it's more likely there would be several (extinct) volcanoes in your mountain chain rather than just one, but it's your planet and you can do what you want with it. The closest real-life Earth equivalent I can think of right now is the Cascades in North America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Range