I gotta mention that the idea of a desert-world Andor goes at least as far back as Shane Johnson's 1989 World's of the Federation book.
Considering the Andorian's colouring and that they're the portrayed as the volotile opposites of the Vulcans, an ice world (opposite of desert Vulcan) makes sense.
I often hear people expressing the idea that blue coloring "makes sense" on an ice world, but I don't understand the reasoning behind that assumption. I'm not aware of any arctic organisms on Earth with blue skin or hair. White would make more sense as a camouflage color. Blue coloring would only make sense as camouflage for an aquatic organism such as a whale or a fish.
All I can think of is that it's by association with human lips turning blue when the body is extremely chilled, but that's the result of insufficient circulation, and it makes no sense that a healthy organism adapted to a cold environment would have the same problems.
And how does opposition of culture correlate to opposition of environment? Remember, the Vulcans are intrinsically just as volatile as the Andorians. They adopted a logical way of life only a couple of millennia ago, a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms.
If anything, a warlike culture makes less sense in an arctic environment. Given the harshness of such an environment, arctic-dwelling humans tend to place a premium on sharing and cooperation with guests. Their enemies are the elements; they can't really afford the distraction of fighting with fellow humans.
Although I'm still not entirely sure if Andor is the same planet (or moon) as Andoria or not.
The behind-the-scenes reason for making Andoria a moon of a Jovian planet was to suggest that the Jovian was Andor and the moon was Andoria. However, the DS9 post-finale novels suggest that Andor is the indigenous name of the planet and Andoria is the Latinized form used by humans.
