ChasingSuns
Sage
So in my WIP, I would like to flip the Northern and Southern hemispheres of the planet in terms of climate. Is there a way for this to make sense? I just don't know a lot about how Earth works when it comes to such things.
Literally the only change from flipping hemispheres is that the Coriolis spin reverses direction. In the Northern hemisphere, the spin of everything from toilet flushes to tornadoes is almost always counter-clockwise. In the Southern hemisphere, it is clockwise. Everything else does not change.
As to deserts, they tend to form at about the 30° of latitude mark. The prevailing winds are divided into 3 (really 6) bands. From 0-30° are the Tropical Easterlies, these winds blow eastward towards the equator (southeast in the Northern hemisphere, northeast in the Southern hemisphere). From 30°-60° are the Prevailing Westerlies, these blow westward toward the poles (northwest in the Northern hemisphere, southwest in the Southern hemisphere). Finally from 60°-90° you have the Polar Easterlies, these blow in the same direction as the Tropical Easterlies. Rain needs humidity in the air to happen, and for the air to get sufficiently humid you need evaporation. This mostly happens from large bodies of water, so most of the time rain clouds form over the sea or by large lakes. The wind then blows some of these rain clouds into land, and that's how it rains on land. Now, contrary to popular belief, a desert is simply an area of low precipitation. It has nothing to do with heat or sand or whatever. The world's largest desert is Antarctica, after all. So for a desert region to form, something needs to block access to the rain clouds the wind would blow into it. This is usually a mountain range, although it can also simply be just too much land between it and the ocean, such as in the middle of Asia. The 30° mark is especially vulnerable to low precipitation because the wind blows away from it, as the Prevailing Westerlies blow towards the west and poles and the Tropical Easterlies blow towards the east and Equator from that latitude. On the equator, the exact opposite happens, since the North Tropical Easterlies and South Tropical Easterlies converge, creating a band with high precipitation. This is where most tropical rain forests are located.
Hope this is helpful.
The seasons are reversed in the northern and southern hemispheres, but that has to do with the angle of the earth's axis and the amount of direct sunlight.
By reversed, do you mean for example, that when it's summer in the north it's winter in the south?