Europe
The second-smallest continent, occupying 8% of the Earth's surface
Area:
10,400,000 sq km/4,000,000 sq mi
Largest Cities:
(population over 1.5 million)
Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham, Bucharest, Budapest, Hamburg,
Istanbul, Kharkov, Kiev, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Manchester, Milan,
Moscow, Paris, Rome, St Petersburg, Vienna, Warsaw
Features:
Mount Elbrus 5,642 m/ 18,517 ft in the Caucasus Mountains is the highest
peak in Europe; Mont Blanc 4,807 m/15,772 ft is the highest peak in
the Alps; lakes (over 5,100 sq km/2,000 sq mi) include Ladoga, Onega,
Vänern; rivers (over 800 km/500 mi) include the Volga, Danube, Dnieper
Ural, Don, Pechora, Dniester, Rhine, Loire, Tagus, Ebro, Oder, Prut,
Rhône
Physical:
Conventionally occupying that part of Eurasia to the W of the Ural
Mountains, N of the Caucasus Mountains, and N of the Sea of Marmara,
Europe lies entirely in the northern hemisphere between 36º N and the
Arctic Ocean. About two- thirds of the continent is a great plain which
covers the whole of European Russia and spreads westwards through Poland
to the Low Countries and the Bay of Biscay. To the N lie the Scandinavian
highlands, rising to 2,472 m/8,110 ft at Glittertind in the Jotenheim
range of Norway. To the S, a series of mountain ranges stretch E-W (Caucasus,
Balkans, Carpathians, Apennines, Alps, Pyrenees, and Sierra Nevada).
The most westerly point of the mainland is Cape Roca in Portugal; the
most southerly location is Tarifa Point in Spain; the most northerly
point on the mainland is Nordkynn in Norway.
A line from the Baltic to the Black Sea divides Europe between an eastern
continental region and a western region characterized by a series of
peninsulas that include Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden), Jutland (mainland
Denmark and a small part of Germany), Iberia (Spain and Portugal), and
Italy and the Balkans (Greece, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and European Turkey). Because of the large number
of bays, inlets, and peninsulas, the coastline is longer in proportion
to its size than that of any other continent. The largest islands adjacent
to continental Europe are the British Isles, Novaya Zemlya, Sicily,
Sardinia, Crete, Corsica, Gotland (in the Baltic Sea), and the Balearic
Islands; more distant islands associated with Europe include Iceland,
Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Madeira, the Azores, and the Canary Islands.
There are three main groups of lakes: (1) the Alpine lakes with Geneva,
Constance, Lucerne, and Neuchatel in Switzerland; Maggiore, Garda, and
Como in Italy; Balaton in Hungary; (2) the Scandinavian group with Vänern,
Vättern, and Mälaren in Sweden and Mjosa and Randsfjord in Norway; and
(3) the lakes of the central plain, Ladoga, Onega, Peipus, and Ilmen
in Russia; Saimaa and others in Finland.
Climate:
The greater part of Europe falls within the northern temperate zone,
which is modified by the Gulf Stream in the NW. There are four main
climatic zones: the NW region (stretching from N Spain through France
to Norway), the Mediterranean zone, central Europe, and E Europe. The
NW region has mild winters, cool summers, and cloud and rain all the
year round with a maximum in the autumn. The Mediterranean zone has
very mild winters, hot, dry summers, and abundant sunshine; most of
the rain falls in the spring and autumn. In central Europe winters are
cold and the summers warm, with the maximum rainfall in summer. Eastern
Europe has extremely cold winters
Industries:
Nearly 50% of the world's cars are produced in Europe (Germany, France,
Italy, Spain, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, UK); the rate
of fertilizer consumption on agricultural land is four times greater
than that in any other continent; Europe produces 43 % of the world's
barley (Germany, Spain, France, UK), 41% of its rye (Poland, Germany),
31% of its oats (Poland, Germany, Sweden, France), and 24% of its wheat
(France, Germany, UK, Romania); Italy, Spain, and Greece produce more
than 70% of the world's olive oil
Population:
(1990 est) 498 million (excluding European Turkey and the former USSR);
annual growth rate 0.3%, projected population of 512 million by the
year 2000
Language:
Mostly Indo-European, with a few exceptions, including Finno-Ugric
(Finnish and Hungarian), Basque, and Altaic (Turkish); apart from a
fringe of Celtic, the NW is Germanic; Letto-Lithuanian languages separate
the Germanic from the Slavonic tongues of E Europe; Romance languages
spread E-W from Romania through Italy and France to Spain and Portugal
Religion:
Christian (Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox), Muslim (Turkey,
Albania, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria), Jewish.
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