Quote Originally Posted by Jeff the Green
So, I actually have a question about my map you did. (For other people's reference, it's below.) We'd discussed that there'd be an area (or possibly two) that would roughly resemble the Atacama desert with almost non-existent precipitation, but there's no arid climate regions on the map, so I'm a bit confused.
That has to do with prevailing wind direction, which changes in regular bands of latitude. I thought the bottom of your map went further south than it does, so the prevailing wind is coming from the other direction then I thought.

Quote Originally Posted by Xallace
1. Assuming an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star, how would global climate differ from Earth if there were significantly more seawater? The largest landmass would be about the size of Brazil, let's say.
All of the principle stuff would be the same. The only difference would be differences of where different climates are. If the majority of the landmasses are in the tropic zones, most of the planet would be jungle. Further out it would depend on latitude and mountains. One thing though, you won't have a lot of deep frozen areas like Siberia.

2. Let's say Egypt were a distinct island, but retained location, Nile river, etc. The Western quarter of the country is dominated by mountains, we'll say about equivalent in size to the Appalachians. Would any of those changes mean anything?
It would be a lot drier. The reason North Africa is largely desert is because the prevailing winds (which would be the ones bringing in precipitation) are coming from the east. So any precipitation is from the Persian Gulf and dumped in Arabia. By throwing mountains between Egypt and the Persian Gulf, you make a serious desert. That's where we're getting Atacama desert type situation, where you have distance and mountains. Except the north stretch of Egypt would still regularly get precipitation, and the summer there would still be a massive torrent of rain.

Quote Originally Posted by Deepbluediver
I realize this is a very open-ended question so any feedback at all is good, but generally speaking, is this sort of thing at all realistic? What sort of weird or quirky factors might it require or generate? Can I have actual contintents or does it all need to be little islands? etc etc etc.
This actually isn't that hard of a question, surprisingly enough. If you take a college course in climatology you will be asked questions a lot like this all the time. Basically, you don't want continents. You want island chains, or at most a Greenland sized area. Any mountains would be tropical regions, because otherwise one side of the island will be lush forest, and the other would be more of a grassland. If you want ideal areas for a thick rainforest, you want a chain of volcanic islands along the equator. This basically guarantees a lot of rain fall and enough nutrients in the soil to support a rainforest.

Oh, and hoofed animals need to be avoided. Hooves destroy jungle ground.