Encyclopedia Mysenvaria

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Writer’s Note

Atmospheric circulation on the Plane is a little different than atmospheric circulation on Earth—mainly because the Plane is not a sphere.

I really like this three-part video series by Met Office which explains atmospheric circulation, and I’ll be using them as my basis for this out-of-setting explanation.

To explain this first part, imagine the Harmonic Treaty as a flashlight shining down onto the Plane. The beam of light released from the flashlight represents the energy dispersed from the Harmonic Treaty. As the flashlight is angled outwards, towards the Edge or Central Pole of the Plane, the light disperses over a larger area. If the flashlight is angled directly down then the light is dispersed over a much smaller area. As the Treaties radiation is dispersed outwards across the Plane it must disperse over a larger surface area and thus warms that area less than it does the area directly below it!

Now, imagine that flashlight orbiting counter-clockwise in a circle above the Plane centered around the Central Pole—this is the Harmony Line (It’s about 53% of the way from the Pole to the Edge)—where the flashlight is either pointing directly at or away from the Central Pole. When pointed towards the Central Pole the light is always on the Pole, there’s never a moment in the Treaties orbit where it is not bombarding the Pole with energy. That is opposed to when it is pointed away from the Central Pole, where we see that the Edge is never completely covered, and most portions of the Edge spend very little time with light. The Central Pole experiences radiation all day, while each point along the Edge experiences radiation once a day.

This means air towards the Edge is colder than at the Harmony Line, but air towards the Central Pole is warmer than at the Harmony Line. Because of one major feature of air this thermal discrepancy forms the basis of the next important factor in atmospheric circulation on the Plane—warm air is less dense and rises, while cold air is more dense and sinks. As warm air rises it creates a low-pressure zone on the surface which pulls in the denser cold air. As cold air sinks it creates a high-pressure zone which pushes air away. This creates atmospheric cells.

At the Harmony Line we see the Treaty rapidly warm air, which then rises and reaches the tropopause. When the warm air reaches the tropopause it spreads outwards away from the Harmony Line and towards the Edge and Pole. As this warm air moves away it cools and sinks back to the Plane, heading back to the Harmony Line. This forms the two Harmony Cells.

The constant heating of the Pole creates a major updraft, where warm air at the Pole rises up, and due to the Heavens, is forced to spread outward, where it cools down and sinks back to the Plane and flows back to the Pole. This forms what is known as the Polar Cell. The Polar Cell and Harmonic Cell meet closer to the Pole than they do the Harmony Line. For the sake of simplicity (I don’t feel like doing math to figure it out) we’ll just say they meet about 34% of the way from the Pole to the Harmony Line.

The Edge is a very cool place, where air is barely heated. Cold air from the Edge sinks towards the Harmony Line, but as it nears it begins to heat up and rise, heading back to the Edge where it cools down again. This creates the Edge Cell. Between the Edge Cell and Harmony Cell is the Outer Cell, which does not operate based off of temperature gradients, but is instead rotated like a cog between the two other cells. The Edge Cell begins around 88% of the way out to the Edge from the Pole, whereas the Outer Cell begins about 74% of the way out.

In real life the rotation of the earth creates the Coriolis Effect, giving the atmospheric cells apparent motion. On the Plane this is not the case—there is no rotation! Instead, the orbit of the Harmonic Treaty drags along the upper atmosphere closest to it, creating a true counter-clockwise motion in the atmosphere.

As air moves across the earth’s surface too it speeds up as it nears the poles—the spin axis of the planet. On the Plane something similar occurs. As air nears the Pole and converges the energy builds and the air moves quicker. The inverse occurs as air moves towards the Edge, however. As air diverges moving towards the Edge it spreads over a larger surface area, losing energy and moving slower!

This means as the air moves towards the Pole it speeds up in the direction of the Treaty’s pull, and as it moves towards the Edge it slows down in the direction of the Treaty’s pull. The atmospheric cells currents are impacted differently at their surface and top dependent on this. All cells in the Inner Circle experience a slowing force in their airs which approach the Harmony Line, and vice versa for all cells in the Outer Ring.