Halfday planetary scan: what do you get?

Due to an unforeseen malfunction your intergalactic spaceship suddenly drops out of hyperspace and comes to a near full stop. The ship is damaged, and will need to be evacuated soon...very soon.

You have some control of sublight travel and manage to find a habitable planet in the system you have arrived in. Lucky you! Off you, and your main ship's computer, go and do all the necessary 'can this planet support life?' tests.

This planet is going to be home for the foreseeable future and you need your evacuation pods to have as much detail about the planet as possible (the pods computer systems are not as powerful as the main ship's system). Eg topography, water sources, temp ranges, and broad annual weather patterns (obviously dangerous plant and animal life will be a nasty surprise once you have landed).

The story-universe is based on normal laws of science. So even though this is an alien planet, hot air still rises, cold air still sinks.

Question. Can you deduce the entire years general weather pattern from about half a day's scans?

If not, What can you deduce from about half a day's scans? (maybe up to a full day cycle)

For example, your scans show a large mountain range, so you can deduce watershed, orographic rainfall, rainshadows, anabatic, katabatic winds, mountain and sea breezes etc.

Example, your scans show a wide shallow coastline along the equator. You can deduce warm shallow seas. Lots of sediment. Weaker ocean currents warming the air above it. Warmer currents spawn storms along the equator (hurricanes and tornadoes)

Etc etc.

Edit I have considered launching a series of small satellites before the ship is evacuated. This would allow more detailed information to be collected and be sent down to the planet in the future. But just incase one or two escape pods land on their communication antenna, or there is some reason why a pod couldn't receive the signal, what basics can I give my survivors.

FURTHER EDIT - info to consider in your answers This being a completely unknown planet, with no known records on file. You have no climate time series; no ice cores, no tree ring data, you have no storm cycle records (eg storm every 100 or 1 000 years), no historical sea level records, no records of what is the hottest/coldest day of each year etc.

You do have far-future tech, so presumably you could get; atmospheric chemical makeup, current weather systems for the planet on the day, topographic map, maybe even a partial geological map (earthquakes and volcano map), current temperatures, broad climate regions (equatorial, tropical, subtropical tundra etc), sea temperatures and currents, bathymetric maps (underwater topographic map),atmospheric circulation (eg Hadley/ferrel/polar cells), wind speeds and currents (eg trade winds, doldrums), storm paths (eg roaring forties). Distance to the moon and the gravitational force on the planet and tides, distance to the sun and calculation of orbit, length of a full day, how long the seasons last for, how long a year is, orbital mechanics influencing 'mini ice ages', to name a few.

With a snapshot of about a day, with the help of a computer running simulations and calculations on how everything influences everything else, could you get a broad outline of the climate and weather for the year?

posted over 8 years ago

EveryBitHelps‭

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