Warm water from one region will move to a colder region, and vice versa. Where does this happen?
First, I assign a temperature to all water cells based on season and latitude $\ell$. Compared to some of my other functions, it's a little boring: \[T_\ell = \begin{cases}-50 & \text{if $\ell < 0$} \\ -57 & \text{otherwise}\end{cases}\cdot\left(\frac{\ell}{90}\right)^{\begin{cases}4 & \text{if $\ell<0$} \\ 2 & \text{otherwise}\end{cases}}\] This is different from my calculation of air temperature.
Once that is done, I "push" that water around for 80 hexes - an arbitrary number, but whatever. Then I take the average of all the water that has entered a new cell, and there we have the new temperature.
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| light blue: water that is colder than expected |
My next move is to check where the water temperature is below freezing, to see how the ice caps look. I have to do a bit of cleaning here because otherwise I get a whole bunch of unconnected floating bergs - which ain't terribly realistic. But after convincing the water of what I think it should be really doing instead, I get a nice permanent ice cap (dark blue), with a seasonal glaciation shown in light blue.
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| North Pole |
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| South Pole |
The shapes aren't mindblowingly realistic but they'll do for my purposes. Of particular interest are potential harbors which become walled off by icebergs during the cold season, as well as any effects the caps might have on navigational routes: it might be quicker to tempt the poles, but depending on the level of sailing technology it might be wise to steer well clear of even the temporary caps.
Next, I'll revisit wind generation, then return to sea temperature to see where the cold water is affecting coastal climate.
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