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Game of Thrones climate and weather: Defining the world
A series on the weather and climate of the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ world
As a fanatical watcher on the couch of HBO’s Game of Thrones, the past few weeks have been bittersweet. With the eighth and final season airing, the anticipation of waiting two years only marginally outweighs the pain and emptiness I know I’ll feel once it all ends. Although I wasn’t on the bandwagon from the beginning, the story and world created by George RR Martin in his ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ (ASOIAF) novels has completely consumed my imagination for the past six years.
I also happen to be an unabashed weather and climate nerd. Although I’ve never comprehensively studied meteorology or climatology (beyond a few classes), the natural processes of the world have always driven my academic and personal research, and granted me unfettered wonderment. So it wasn’t long after I started watching Thrones years ago that I began to speculate on the similarities and differences between their world and ours regarding natural geography—weather and climate in particular.
This post is the first in a series exploring that. Following posts will focus on each region throughout the realm — starting with ‘The North’. Once I get through all of Westeros, I hope to move on to Essos, and perhaps even beyond.
Here I will outline the parameters that must be set and general assumptions that must be made about similarities between Earth and the planet Game of Thrones is set on.
Defining the ASOIAF world
There are disparate seasonal variations between summer and winter in ASOIAF (probably due to magical influences), but much of the climate and weather is quite familiar to here on Earth. And this is unsurprising. In fact, George RR Martin has been quoted as saying that his story takes place on a round (or more accurately, an oblate spheroid) planet not too dissimilar from our own world, if not just a bit larger. According to the ‘Atlas of Ice and Fire’ blog, which has crunched the numbers, the planet ASOIAF is set on is approximately 8% larger than our own.
