Ocean Currents

[KaNick]

I check the sticky and didn't find this anywhere.

I don't know much about Ocean Currents, but I think that they could have a role in the game.

• I'm pretty sure that they could have an impact on sea travel. They could act as some kind of highway which give you more/less moves per turn.
  
• Global Warming could be able to change them. This could add a little bit of spice to the Modern Age. Anything to add a little bit of randomness would be good in the end of the game because at that point you already know if you are going to win most of the time.
  
• Some other stuff

 

[ShADoW^HawK]

Well, as far as I know, global warming shouldn't change ocean currents, since ocean currents rely a bit on wind patterns and other stuff, and so, it wouldn't change much the ocean currents.

But, what you're saying could be easily done. All the guys have to do is make the movement points be + or -the amount of the standard units movement points. Of course, I don't think that this would add too much to the game, since you could very well do this for all units.

 

[KaNick]

I'm pretty sure that the currents direction has something to do with ocean tempurature, not wind.

 

[GeZe]

They should steel the 'sim earth' earth engine. It has all that and more.

 

[Shoe35]

this site has a basic explanation of Ocean Currents
http://earth.usc.edu/~stott/Catalina/Oceans.html

There are two type of Ocean Currents:

1. Surface Currents--Surface Circulation

These waters make up about 10% of all the water in the ocean.

These waters are the upper 400 meters of the ocean.



2. Deep Water Currents--Thermohaline Circulation

These waters make up the other 90% of the ocean

These waters move around the ocean basins by density driven forces and gravity.

The density difference is a function of different temperatures and salinity

These deep waters sink into the deep ocean basins at high latitudes where the temperatures are cold enough to cause the density to increase.

 

[Shoe35]

some more info on how global warming can affect Ocean Currents
http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~christof/div/fact4thc.html#3.

3.Can the thermohaline circulation change due to global warming ?
Whether or not the thermohaline circulation will be affected by human induced global warming is strongly dependent on the future temperature distribution and fresh water supply over the North Atlantic region. Most models predict an increase in precipitation in high latitudes and a region of minimum warming over the North Atlantic using a scenario of doubling CO2 within the next 70 years. Most models also predict a decrease in the strength of the thermohaline circulation. However, the exact reduction varies from 30% to only 10%. The details and the long-term effects (more then 100 years) of these changes have so far only been explored by very few studies. One of these studies was done at the University of Bern using a zonally averaged climate model (Stocker and Schmittner, 1997). It shows that the thermohaline circulation not only reduces, but may shut-down completely under “strong“ global warming with a fourfold increase of CO2 concentration within the next 140 years. This illustrates that global warming can affect the climate system in a very non-linear fashion.

 

[Ultraworld]

cool idea.

 

[Phoenix]

Its a nice idea but its probably too difficult to implement it sadly.

Shadow^Hawk - about global warming effecting sea currents - watch "The Day After Tomorrow" - I'm sure its out in America by now and it is one of the few films that actualy has scientific advisors.