World Climate Lab 0.1.2 - The Living Climate Update
World Climate Lab now runs the same kind of physics as academic models run. The primitive equations of a rotating atmosphere, solved on ten levels, with radiation, moisture, cloud, a slab ocean and sea ice: the physics academic models are built from, on your graphics card, settling a world in minutes instead of overnight on a cluster. Set it loose on Earth, and it reproduces the world's climate zones about as closely as published academic models do.
Every world gets its weather from that model now, and every layer you look at comes out of the same run. Temperature, rainfall, cloud, pressure, winds at two heights, sea ice, snow, soil moisture, and vegetation agree with one another because they come from one solution.
You can watch it happen. Load a world, and the map fills in day by day as the climate settles, with the first year forming before you.
What your air is made of decides the climate. Every gas does to light what it really does. Air scatters sunlight according to what it is made of and how much of it there is, and gases hold heat in their own absorption bands and through collisions between molecules, which on some worlds is the only warmth there is. Build a world out of carbon dioxide, methane or hydrogen and it behaves like one. Thick atmospheres behave like thick atmospheres, and a world built to run hot runs as hot as its own air and sunlight make it.
New gases to build with. A blend of manufactured fluorocarbons joins the composition list, closing the part of the infrared window the common gases leave open. Ammonia warms a world from the middle of that window, so a trace goes a long way. Sulphur dioxide does both of its jobs: it traps heat in a band of its own, and it turns to droplets that scatter sunlight away, so a little warms a world while a lot makes it bright and cold.
The oceans move. A new Paths view on the Sea Circulation layer follows the water itself, tracing streamlines through the currents the way an ocean conveyor map is drawn, with the warm surface limb coloured by the temperature it carries and the cold deep return drawn beneath it.
Tides, and what they drown. The Tides layer solves the ocean as a rotating body of water, so tides sweep around basins, vanish at amphidromic points and pile up in resonant bays. Every tide-raising body counts, from a world's moons to both stars of a binary. Where a tide is extreme, the layer now shades in red the land that high water would cover: bring a moon close enough and the deltas, shelf coasts and low plains go under.
Preset updates and new bodies. Earth now comes with the Moon, at its own mass, radius and orbit, raising Earth's tides. Brown dwarfs join the host bodies, with their own cooling with age, their L, T and Y classes, and the very close orbits their temperate zones demand.
Everything above is localised in all six languages.
Full list of changes
The climate model
Every world's climate is solved by a general-circulation model running on the graphics card: a rotating atmosphere on ten levels with its own winds, moisture, cloud, radiation, soil and ocean.
The model runs when a world loads, and again whenever you press Reset, load a preset, or change the terrain or the sea mask. The map fills in day by day while it settles and the interface stays responsive throughout.
Temperature, rainfall, cloud, pressure, winds at two heights, sea ice, snow, soil moisture, vegetation cover and potential evaporation all come from the same run, so the layers agree with one another.
On Earth, the climate zones sit close to the real life observed map.
Slow rotators and tidally locked worlds are properly supported. The climate starts from the light a world actually receives, so an eyeball world settles into a warm day side and an iced night side and stays there.
The readouts above the map, including mean temperature, rainfall, greenhouse warming and the temperature a world radiates at, come from the model's own run.
Changing the atmosphere settles the world again. Adjust the pressure or any gas and the climate follows.
Every world starts near the climate its own star and air point to, so distant worlds reach their answer sooner.
The air
Every gas scatters sunlight and absorbs heat according to what it is and how much of it there is, in its own bands and through collisions between molecules.
Carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen atmospheres are warmed by the gas they are made of, not only by the traces in them.
Hydrogen skies hold heat. At one bar such a sky holds back about a fifth again as much as a nitrogen one, and half as much again at three bars.
Thick atmospheres behave like thick atmospheres. Ninety bars of carbon dioxide holds back nearly twice the heat a single bar does, and reflects far more of the arriving sunlight.
Added a blend of manufactured fluorocarbons, which closes more of the infrared window than sulphur hexafluoride and CFC-11 do between them.
Ammonia warms a world from the middle of that window, so a trace goes a longways.
Sulphur dioxide warms a world and brightens it: a band of its own traps heat, and the droplets it forms scatter sunlight back to space.
Gases that work in that window warm a world by as much as their own absorption allows, so warmth depends on which gases are present rather than on how much is poured in.
A world's temperature follows its own air and sunlight, however far that carries it from Earth's.
Oceans and tides
Added a Paths view to the Sea Circulation layer, tracing streamlines through the model's own currents, with arrows for direction.
Surface paths are coloured by the temperature of the water carrying them, from cold blue to warm red, and the deep return is drawn in cold blue.
Added a Tides layer showing each coast and sea's tidal range in metres, solved once per world and recalculated when terrain, sea level or orbits change.
The ocean responds as a rotating body of water, so tides sweep around basins, nearly vanish at amphidromic points, pile up along coasts and in resonant bays, and stay small in enclosed seas.
Every tide-raising body is included from its actual orbit: up to three moons, a moon world's parent planet and sibling moons, and both stars of a binary.
Where the tidal range is extreme, from about 50 m upward, the layer shades in red the land high water would cover, with a brighter line along the limit.
Hovering covered land reports its height against that high water.
Terrains without seafloor depth get an estimated seafloor with continental shelves, slopes and abyssal plains, so shelf seas and narrow bays can resonate.
Uploaded bathymetry is used whenever available.
The Earth preset carries reference bathymetry for the tide solver, so Earth's tides follow its real shelves, ridges and basins.
Tides are solved on a grid of roughly 20 km, resolving shelf seas and larger bays.
The Tides key shows which seafloor was used and offers Re-run, Upload bathymetry and Remove uploaded bathymetry.
Hovering reports the local tidal range, a typical cycle's range, and the height of high and low water.
Clouds
Rebuilt how the Clouds layer and Satellite clouds are drawn: crisp, wind-stretched cloud with fine wisps.
Cloud edges and gaps come from the simulated cloud fraction, so dry air breaks cloud into fields and clear gaps while humid regions read as solid decks.
Storm-track and tropical belts break into drifting, comma-shaped systems with dry slots between them, their edges spilling irregularly into neighbouring humid air.
Cloud forms, drifts with the local wind and dissolves in place, and on longer years the pattern repeats each orbit so animated exports loop cleanly.
Convective regions draw puffier cells, high cloud carries more cirrus-like wisps, and slowly rotating worlds show long zonal streaks.
Vegetation
Added a Soil Moisture view to the Vegetation layer, showing the water held in the ground as a share of what that ground can hold.
Hovering reports how full the soil is, from parched to saturated.
Worlds and bodies
Earth now starts with the Moon, at its own mass, radius and orbit, raising Earth's tides.
Added brown dwarfs as host bodies, with their cooling over time, their L, T and Y classes, and the close orbits their temperate zones require.
Fixed small rocky bodies being classified as icy. Bodies are compared against the density their own mass would give them if they were rock, so the Moon, Vesta and their like read as rocky. The class also sets how a body dissipates tides, how close a moon can orbit before breaking up, and how much relief its interior can support.
Exports
Added a Cloud Loop export recording one full orbit as a seamless sequence of 8192 x 4096 greyscale cloud-opacity maps with a JSON manifest.
Choose 104, 208, 365 or 730 frames per orbit.
The loop's closing frames blend onto its opening frames, so playback wraps without a jump.
Fixes
Fixed saves and exports failing on some Linux systems, including Flatpak installs and Steam Deck game mode. The app now reads the standard Documents
setting directly and falls back to the home folder if it is unavailable.
Fixed framed poster exports showing "No key" instead of the map legend, on every layer including every Precipitation option.
Framed posters now carry the localised layer name as their title, such as "Near-Surface Air Temperature", and their legends name the display option in view, such as Rainfall or Snow Fraction.
Fixed animated year exports being unavailable when the interface language was French, Spanish, German, Russian or Traditional Chinese.