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I want the temperature of the earth's poles to be higher so that they have a temperate European climate with yearly temperatures averaging 15-20 degrees Celsius.

What will the climate of the rest of the planet now be like?

Please note that I am not involving any humans in this. I am purely interested in the plant life and climate in (what was previously) the temperate and tropic zones.

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    $\begingroup$ You want to move the Earth closer to the Sun? That sounds far more drastic than simply raising the temperature at the poles. $\endgroup$ – Lee Leon Aug 22 '17 at 8:50
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    $\begingroup$ You're going to fry the planet. With the current configuration of continents, that probably makes the equator hot enough to put enough water vapour into the air that it will dissociate in the upper atmosphere and the hydrogen will be lost to space. So over tens of millions of years the Earth will lose all its water, most life will die off, CO2 levels will increase, and it will end up like Venus. $\endgroup$ – Mike Scott Aug 22 '17 at 8:58
  • $\begingroup$ You are interested in the effect of raising the temperature or what will a warmer planet look like? $\endgroup$ – Bougainville Aug 22 '17 at 9:00
  • $\begingroup$ The Earth would have been like this in the early Jurassic period. It is possible that climate change aka global warming will also bring this about. There is no real need to move the planet closer to the Sun which would cause all sorts of harm to that which you say you do not want to change. $\endgroup$ – Lee Leon Aug 22 '17 at 9:02
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    $\begingroup$ Noah: erm... where's did I parked it? $\endgroup$ – user6760 Aug 22 '17 at 9:11
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If you do not change atmosphere and get higher polar temperatures just by increasing sunlight you may have problems:

  • equatorial, tropical and good part of temperate regions would be scorched deserts, probably hot enough to boil water.
  • assuming you won't have a constant cloud blanket (due to tremendous evaporation) and the atmosphere composition remain constant somehow. you would have extreme temperature variations between "day" and "night" due to radiation of heat at night.

We actually had something similar here, on Earth, a few millions years ago with Antarctica covered by rainforest, but that was obtained by high CO2 concentration, which actually helps to keep temperature more uniform both latitude and season wise.

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So you can remove land masses from the poles and the circumpolar regions, opening the poles to large scale air and water movement that will bring heat from the equator to the poles increasing not only the temperature at the poles but also global temperature equality. Now that means that there's increased landmass near the equator, more tropics, more deserts, a little more temperate land too but continental not maritime influence is going to be the primary driver of world climate, so day/night temperature fluctuations are going to be greater and the land is going to be generally cooler and drier; a bit like during the last ice age but with less land ice and higher sea levels.

Now I'm not certain by any means but I'm reasonably sure that even with greatly increased temperature equality you need to pump in more heat in the form of increased insolation to get a 15-20 degree bump. That's going to increase average global temperatures which means increases in: evaporation, cloud cover, rainfall, bigger and more violent storms, a narrower tropical band, hotter tropics with higher water turn over, wider desert bands, hotter deserts, drier deserts (all desertification will be made worse by continental climate dominance), larger steppes on the equatorial margins of the temperate zones, temperate zones that are a little narrower and much less productive than those we're used to (this is due to their northerly position, they get less solar energy and the lower water budget in continental areas). I'm pretty sure that's everything.

Interestingly enough any mountain ranges in the continental interiors are probably going to be permanently snowcapped and push glaciers down into the lowlands around them.

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