Scientist Describes Middle Earth Climate In English, Dwarvish and Elvish
LONDON (CBS Seattle) – Visiting the Hobbit’s Shire would be like a cool day in England, while making the trek to Mordor would put you in a hellish climate more like, well, Los Angeles.
That’s the conclusion of a British climatologist who created a computer model of what it would be like to live in the Middle Earth from J.R.R. Tolkein’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” reports Science.
The University of Bristol’s Dan Lunt, a self-described wizard, aka Radagast the Brown, compared the fantasy climate to that of modern Earth and to our planet in the time of the dinosaurs.
The paper finds that just like our planet, temperatures in Middle Earth get cooler the farther north you go (or south, depending on which pole you’re headed towards) and is warmer at the equator.
Radagast the Brown concludes that Middle Earth is very similar to Western Europe and North Africa.
The Misty Mountains trap moisture, creating hot and dry conditions in Mordor (not withstanding the influence of Sauron).
Elves probably sailed from the Grey Havens because of the region’s prevailing easterly winds.
Lunt, er, Radagast, writes that he created this climate model in his spare time, and wanted to show how any climate can be simulated, even made-up ones.
He adds it could help forecast the effects of global warming.