Climate Change Pandaria

Something I'm thinking about.

I may have to deviate a bit more from the source material in trying to make Pandaria really make sense.  Meaning, I need to change the climate a bit.

We are talking about a continent at the south pole.  And granted, our Antarctica was created to be that way due to the joining of North America and South America when the isthmus of Central America was being formed...which altered the current around the southern continent and locked it into an eternal vortex of cold.  

Thing is though, yeah, Pandaria doesn't have this.  So there is reason to say that it may be greener.  However...one thing strikes me.

The Kun-Lai Summit should have created a Cold Desert in the Townlong Steppes.

Hell the biome that is the Townlong Steppes doesn't even make sense in the first place.

Mostly because of the word "Steppe".

A steppe is a very flat grassland.  The United States has a Steppe that's labeled "Tornado Alley"  Guess why?  Is it because of the pretty trees?  No.  

It does not have any sort of forests.  It may have a tree here and there, but not so clumped together.  And any trees growing there should have been imported from another location.

And given its location, the Townlong Steppes should be a Cold Steppe, not a deciduous forest filled with Ginkgo and Sakura trees.

Basically, the Townlong Steppes should look more like Alberta, Canada, not...well what it looks like now.

Granted yeah, maybe some of those islands that are included in the Steppes might be more biologically diverse with forests, but not the steppe close to the tundra.

If anything, the forests on those islands would be more like a Taiga, rather than deciduous.

As in, forests found in places again like Canada, northern Mongolia, or Russia (which is Asian so it counts.)  Or even Oregon, Wyoming, and Washington.

And the only place I'd say that resembles a Taiga forest and is located not in those climates...is the Spruce-Pine forest of the Smoky Mountains.  

And really, where's the Chinese deserts?  If Pandaria is supposed to be a land where Chinese stereotypes rule, where's the desert?  Pandaria needs a Chinese Desert.

And I get it that just about every continent on Azeroth has a desert of some sort, but that's the point.  Deserts are found everywhere!

My country's mostly desert, caused by again, a bunch of really tall mountains disturbing the air.

Take a good picture of North America and a big chunk of the US is tan and brown.  Take a snapshot during the winter, and it's all brown, save for a few green bits closer to the Gulf of Mexico.

That's where a lot of our asphalt is made, and hell, this winter we needed a lot of salt on the roads...so...yeah, salt flats.

Where's the salt flats of Azeroth?  

I'm going to pretend they're in some undiscovered place around the Barrens, the Badlands, and yeah...somewhere in around the friggin tundra of the Kun-Lai Summit.

Yes, the Valley of the Four Winds is probably more like an actual grassland or "steppe" than the actual Steppe is.  But I am going to change the look of the Steppes when Nel gets to them.  

The difference between the Four Winds and Townlong...the Four Winds, like the Jade Forest, is being fed by runoff from the Vale.  

Townlong is being fed by the runoff from Mt. Neverest.  So, we should be seeing several rivers in around the Steppes which may include some trees...much like a Steppe should have.  

Trying to make the ecology of this place make sense.

And I finished Chapter 18, but it is now being edited, so it'll be a while before I can post it.

Spoilers though, Nel saves Cho and his archeological assistants, makes friends with a Pandaren shaman, heals both Nazgrim and Taylor (the Alliance leader in the game), and tells them to fix their mess, as in PUT THE DAMNED SHA OF DOUBT BACK IN ITS HOLE!

Because yeah, it was those two idiots and their battle that freed the Sha, not Neltharion.  But you guys already knew that.

And more Nel trying to get out of fighting the Sha because well...he's afraid if he does it, he'll destroy the Jade Forest in doing so.

Luckily, the Jade Forest covers an area similar to that of the Amazon Rainforest, so...he may end up destroying just a small bit of it.