Wind Direction
I created a simple method to simulate the wind patterns described in this image for Global Circulation. Here are the steps I used:
- Define Latitudes and wind directions to go with them. All directions are in radians. I defined the following latitudes:
- North Pole = South
- North Circle = North
- North Tropic = East
- Equator = West
- South Tropic = East
- South Circle = South
- South Pole = North
- For each row of data lerp between whichever 2 latitudes the row is in between to get a value.
- For each cell in the row distort the row value by the matching cell from a noise map multiplied by the distortion factor. (In this example FBM was used octaves = 5 and size = 2)
A distortion factor from 0.15 – 0.2 is probably the best to have enough distortion to create paths like a jet stream but still maintain the general direction of the defined latitude/direction pairs. Next up: Wind Magnitude
Wind Direction Map Legend:
- Blue = East
- Green = North
- Red = West
- Yellow = South
