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Re:The climate of a retrograde rotating Earth (2018) by ncmncm on Friday October 18, 2019 @08:42PM (#21296111)
This is a very surprising topic. Why should anything be different?

But it's not about rotation not matching direction of motion around the sun. It's more about how climates on the continents, as they lie, would be affected by jet streams and ocean currents which are driven by earth's rotation. They would encounter the coastlines and mountain ranges from different directions. On the real earth, for example, we see England and Norway oddly warm, equatorial Africa oddly dry, the Amazon uniquely wet. This being about fluid dynamics, every detail is unpredictable, from an armchair perspective. Some alterations seem sensible, but that sense is too frequently illusory.

Re:The climate of a retrograde rotating Earth (2018) by gus_massa on Friday October 18, 2019 @09:39PM (#21296297)
The direction of the Trade Winds [1] is determined by the rotation of the Earth due to the Coriolis effect. They would reverse, and I guess it would cause more humidity in West Africa and less humidity in East Africa.

The effect of the big mountain range is more difficult to estimate (without a good simulation). In South America the Andes cover all the West Cost. In the South part the winds go mostly to the East, so it rains a lot in the small west past of the Andes, and there is a semi desert part in the big part to the ease of the Andes. In the North part of South America, the winds go mostly to the West, so you get a big humid part in the Amazon. If the winds are reversed, the semi desert part and the rainforest part somewhat exchange positions.

I don't understand the sea currents enough for handwaving, but a big change in the Gulf Stream [2] would make the United Kingdom much cooler.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream

Re:The climate of a retrograde rotating Earth (2018) by labster on Saturday October 19, 2019 @01:04AM (#21296848)
As someone who studied meterology and paleoclimatology in university, the result seems completely obvious that a whole lot would be different if circulation was reversed. Weather is mostly large-scale turbulence, driven by the entropically irreversible phase change of water. I suspect a mild case of Dunning-Kruger effect here -- on encountering evidence, you changed your position quite quickly.

If you look at some prehistorical events, like the closing of the isthmus of Panama or the opening of the Tasmanian sea, these had a huge effect on heat flow throughout the atmosphere continents away, enough to inaugurate new geological eras, you can see how everything changes based on the shapes of the turbulence.

There are interesting things in the results though. When the wind direction switches in California now, you turn into a downslope wind driven desert with power failures. But if you reverse the flow everywhere, this study looks like it's doing some sort of eddy thing through the Gulf of Mexico, and probably driving a bunch of hurricanes to L.A. Can't really tell looking at that weird ITCZ though... but it looks like the Congo would get absolutely slammed by hurricanes in this scenario.

Re:The climate of a retrograde rotating Earth (2018) by ncmncm on Thursday October 24, 2019 @05:19PM (#21349294)
The most prevalent example of Dunning-Kruger effect is in spurious mentions of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where it practically never applies.