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Happy Festivus! This is the first in a series of posts that describe fictional climates of places from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit. Using Christopher Tolkien's and Karen Wynn Fonstad’s maps of Middle Earth as well as formulas derived by climatologists, I was able to figure out what the climate might be like for a number of locations. I’ll be posting a new climate every week (as per forum rules). First up is Hobbiton.
Hobbiton
Hobbiton is one of the largest settlements in the Shire and is home to Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. It turns out Hobbiton wouldn’t have the same climate as southern England, on which the Shire is based, but rather would be more like northern Germany. This is because the UK is an island, while the Shire is landlocked, which produces a less mild climate. Hobbiton would have colder winters than anywhere in the UK near sea level and at the same time would have hotter summers than anywhere in the UK. However, winters are still warm enough that a heavy fall of snow would be rare, while summers are almost warm enough to allow for the growth of red wine and tobacco.
Koppen classification: Cfb.
P.S. This is the first time that I have ever posted a thread with a poll so I apologize if it didn't show up. Ratings are A, B, C, D, and F.
The method to my madness:
Spoiler
Basically, I used a pair of studies by Linacre & Geerts (2002) and Geerts (2002) to determine mean annual temperature and annual temperature range. In these studies, you can find formulas that allow you to calculate these based on latitude, distance inland, and elevation. A climatologist named Dan Lunt (masquerading as “Radagast the Brown” in the article) wrote a paper on this subject a few years back . However, there were some inaccuracies (for instance, the Shire is located 10 degrees closer to the pole than it should be), so I took his findings with a BIG grain of salt.
Tolkien said that Hobbiton was located at the same latitude as Oxford, which is at 51.75 north latitude. It’s 350 miles (or about 600 km) inland measuring from the beaches of western Lindon (the Gulf of Lune is essentially an inland lake, so I ignored it). And from Barbara Strachey’s map of the Shire, I know it’s located at 300 feet (or about 100 m) above sea level. Plugging these figures into Linacre and Geerts’ formulas, I get an annual mean of 9.7 C and a temperature range of 18 C. Precipitation was based on Hannover, Germany as well as Radagast’s paper.
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