Europe: Physical Geography, Climate, and Socio-Economic Features
1. Problems of Delimitation of Europe
The boundaries of Europe have changed over the centuries. Political and territorial organizations, states, confederations, and kingdoms have joined and separated over time.
Three key moments in the formation of countries and frontiers are:
- The unification of Spain, Portugal, France, and Germany as states in the 15th and 16th centuries, the oldest in Europe.
- The unification of Italy and Germany in the 19th century.
- The formation of nation-states and the decay of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
The confrontation between Europeans throughout history, with the latest episodes of the 20th century with two world wars, accelerated the idea of creating a European Union to avoid a new conflict.
In the continental sense, Europe does not exist (Eurasia), as it is joined to Asia, but it does have unifying elements:
a) Physical:
- Isolated by water: the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea.
- Bordering Asia on the Caucasus Mountains, the Urals, and the Caspian Sea.
- The boundaries of Europe are the North Cape and the North Polar Cap, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, and the south Caucasus, and the Urals and the Ural River to the east.
b) Cultural:
- The existence of a distinct cultural identity, exported to the rest of the Western and non-Western world until the Industrial Revolution, taking a dominant position in the world until the Second World War.
- These facts, plus the two world wars, contributed to the formation of European identity and the union of shared interests and a common culture or way of life: the Western.
c) Socio-economic:
Some distinguishing features:
- A high level of development compared to the world average.
- A high proportion of the urban population (> 80% in many cases).
- Very advanced demographic and economic features:
- Low or very low birth rates.
- High life expectancy.
- A very old population.
- A complex transport network.
- An outsourced economy.
d) Political:
- Political stability, tradition as states, and maturity of its institutions and rules, thus favoring the European Union as a continental organization.
- In recent years, the joining of the capitalist world and formal democracies of Central and Eastern countries.
2. Joint Physiographic Europe
European relief is organized around a large central plain surrounded by mountain regions. The plain is dominant, and the influence of the mountains is remarkable. The combination of mountain and plain gives the territory an ecological diversity that has allowed large amounts of resources to be exploited.
a) Northwestern Cordillera:
- Location: From Scandinavia, through Great Britain and Ireland. They are fragments of ancient Caledonian mountains (Caledonian Orogeny was primary).
- Orogeny: Outcrop by the clash between the Canadian-Greenlandic shield and the Baltic shield.
- Modeling: Water erosion, wind, and rain during the secondary (calm orogenic) give wavy, flattened, smooth features.
- Subsequent orogeny (Tertiary, Alpine) fractured blocks, plunging some parts as the continental shelf of the North Sea and Ireland, and raising others, i.e., the current ranges.
- The Alps are an exception and should form the action of glaciers, fjords as the result of the invasion of the sea.
b) A set of small solid and interior basins:
- Location: From the Spanish Meseta to Czechoslovakia.
- Orogeny and modeling: Fragments of the former Hercynian mountains subject to demolition processes. Existence of horsts raised or fragments located in mountainous areas, bounded by faults or sunken, converted large areas of agricultural activity (Duero and Tajo-Guadiana in Spain).
c) Central Plains:
- Location: Between the mountains northwest and the former Hercynian mountains discussed above, extends the plain triangular and open to the east.
- Modeling: Dominant horizontal, flat landscape altered by small hills among which are the Baltic Hills.
d) Southern Ridges:
- Orogeny and modeling: Alpine Orogeny, tertiary. Dominate sedimentary materials and the young mountain ranges of folding, which justifies its altitude (up to 4807 meters in Mont Blanc).
- Location: Along the Mediterranean coast.
- Units emphasize more important, the Alps and the Pyrenees.
3. Bioclimatic Features and Climates of Europe
Notable features:
a) Moderation heat:
- The combination of latitude and oceanic influence.
- Europe is located in the middle latitudes with a balanced heat balance. Air masses that affect: Alternate polar and tropical air, which causes seasonal contrasts.
- Influence of the sea on the west coast, the current of the Gulf of Mexico produces a double effect: it tempers the winter, making it warmer, and moisture-laden ocean air, which is then released in the form of storms on the continent.
b) Shortage of mountain barriers:
- Allows the entry of moisture-laden Atlantic storms and limits the continental areas further east.
c) Regional climatic contrasts:
- Produced by air masses, the cyclone and storms, and for the relief:
- Air masses: The influence of two dynamic centers:
- The Iceland Depression: Acts during the winter, causing disturbances of the polar front most of the rainfall.
- The Azores anticyclone of the time stable and high temperatures in summer.
- Mountain barriers exert a dual climatic effect:
- As altitude increases, temperature decreases, and humidity increases.
- Oriented facades or west to the wetter windward or leeward east by the foehn effect.
Europe is divided into four climatic zones:
a) Ocean Climate:
- Location: Atlantic slope, from Norway to the Galician coast.
- Mild temperatures throughout the year.
- Little temperature range.
- Abundant precipitation throughout the year without dry months.
- Little annual insolation.
- Regional variations in latitude, topography, and distance from the coast.
- Deciduous forest.
- Areas very humanized and/or inhabited.
b) Continental climate:
- Location: Inland and east.
- General features:
- Greater temperature range (for the continental, colder winters and shorter).
- Younger and those in summer rainfall. In humid continental climate.
- Accentuation of seasonal contrasts in the direction of the Balkans.
- Progressive degradation of the Atlantic forest or coniferous inwards, giving way to the steppe.
c) Mediterranean climate:
- Location: South of the continent and the Alps. Between 30 and 45 degrees north, from the Portuguese coast to the Black Sea.
- General features:
- Increasing dryness, especially in summer.
- Very irregular rains. It rains more on the windward (Lisbon…) than on the leeward (Athens…).
- Oak and cork forest, adapted to summer drought and aridity.
- Rivers not navigated by its highly irregular, steep slopes and severe droughts.
d) Arctic Climate:
- Location: Northern Scandinavia.
- Inexistence of summer heat.
- Vegetation, the domain of the tundra.
e) Mountain Climates:
- Provide the school in the big mountains.