Goal: Describe your conworld’s climate and weather patterns
Note: Climate refers to predominant conditions while weather includes specific phenomena associated with the climate.
Tip: Remember to consider any common seasonal shifts in weather patterns.
Work focus: Create/Make/List
The basic setting you chose for your conworld will help you identify the climate of the area, and then the climate is the umbrella under which more specific weather patterns and phenomena occur.
For instance, consider the Arrakis world of Dune. (You don’t need to know Dune or its world to follow along in this discussion!) It is a desert planet. As a desert, its climate is dry. A dry climate means water will be hard to come by since liquids evaporate so quickly in such dry climates. In many (but not all) deserts, it becomes very hot when the sun is shining and then very cold when it is not. The air doesn’t hold heat in the same way humid air does.
Other features of the conworld are intertwined with climate—for instance, you don’t expect oak trees to grow in deserts because they require a lot of water. Deserts are typically filled with sand or sand-like substances that are dry and windblown. Because deserts don’t support a great deal of vegetation, the wind more directly affects the shaping of the terrain, where wind can create large sand dunes, and windstorms may bring sands that cover an entire town.
Within such a world, common weather patterns you might expect to see include wind, windstorms, daytime heat, and nighttime chilliness. There may also be rains that come and go, or there may even be snow storms from time to time.
Your conworld may be incredibly different from a desert planet. Your climate may have more seasonal shifts that affect the vegetation and types of weather patterns your speakers will experience on a daily basis. It may also be more tropical with more humidity and hotter weather with less seasonal shift, but it could also be more polar with colder weather and more extreme differences in the amount of daylight it has.
If you are creating a non-Earthlike conworld, then these features will completely depend on how you craft your world. In this case, I encourage you to find sources to help define features like climate and weather patterns in fictional worlds to make a more consistent and cohesive setting for your speakers (such as Exolore, a podcast hosted by Dr. Moiya McTier, or a YouTube series aimed at supporting biology in fictional world creation, such as those created by Biblaridion or Artifexian).