Exotic Weather of Habitable Exoplanets

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Polkageist

Ah, think more creatively! There's lot of interesting weather patterns so maybe start with something cool and work backwards to figure out how it might work if necessary.

How about a literal Tornado Alley?
On this planet there exists an area or areas that are affected by daily (more or less) tornadoes that are confined to a narrow strip of land, perhaps a valley or canyon. Much like old faithful here on earth, these tornadoes occur with regularity and predictability, and can safely be observed from the edges of their domain.

This was exactly what I was thinking of. I'm mostly interesting in weather that is different in degree or kind from Earth's. What would be required for something like this?

Originally Posted by dcarson

Mars gets global dust storms.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I wonder if near permanent storms like Jupiter's big eye could exist on habitable planets.

Also tidally locked planets could have a zone of earth like temperatures. Now that would create interesting permanent weather patterns.

Originally Posted by Mgellis

Short version...some experts think tidally locked planets around M-type stars would have a huge hurricane at the spot pointing directly at the sun with winds and rain radiating outwards in a spiral pattern across the rest of the planet.

Storms seem popular. In addition to Jupiter's red spot there is also Saturn's north pole hexagon for interesting storms.

A permanent storm would be interesting.

Tidally locked planets are definitely cool.

Originally Posted by ericthered

you can also mess around with extreme terrain that generates extreme weather.

Larry Niven's known space has a planet called canyon. In the process of a war the hostile world was inadvertently partially terraformed when a weapon put a huge gash in the side. Most of the planet was mars like and uninhabitable. The gash collected an ocean and people lived in it.

I think Niven also has a planet where only the mountains are suitable for human life.

you can also change the length of the day, which will change the weather. We have daily patterns that set up each day (which way the breeze blows at the ocean). If you increase the length of the day, that changes.

Interesting planets. How large of a change in day length is required to make a noticeable effect?

[Wraithe]

Originally Posted by Sindri

What interesting weather or climate variations from Earth normal could exist on a habitable exoplanet in a hard science fiction game?

I strongly suggest Larry Niven for weird habitable and yet hard-science worlds.

Apart from the aforementioned Canyon, you have:

Jinx: Can't even describe adequately here in the forum, suffice to say- Only habitable in two bands to the "north" and "south" of the equator, and not the polar regions (They're in 'vacuum'). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinx_(Known_Space)

Plateau - Venus-like, with a plateau (called Mount Lookitthat), half the size of California, rising high enough out of the dense atmosphere to be habitable.

We Made It - The planet's axis is pointed along the plane of its ecliptic (like Uranus), creating ferocious winds on the order of 500 mph (800 km/h) during half of the planet's year, forcing the people to live underground.

Those are just the high points for weather. Definitely check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space and look under "Locations".