Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In terms of shape, Europe is a collection of connected peninsulas and nearby islands. The two largest peninsulas are Europe itself and Scandinavia to the north, divided from each other by the Baltic Sea. Three smaller peninsulas— Iberia, Italy, and the Balkans —emerge from the southern margin of the mainland.
The term originally derives from the early fourteenth century sense of trade (in late Middle English) still often meaning "path" or "track". The Portuguese recognized the importance of the trade winds (then the volta do mar, meaning in Portuguese "turn of the sea" but also "return from the sea") in navigation in both the north and south Atlantic Ocean as early as the 15th century.
Europe covers about 10.18 million km 2 (3.93 million sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model). Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states , of which Russia is the largest and most populous , spanning 39% of the continent and comprising ...
Atmospheric circulation. Atmospheric circulation is the large-scale movement of air and together with ocean circulation is the means by which thermal energy is redistributed on the surface of the Earth. The Earth's atmospheric circulation varies from year to year, but the large-scale structure of its circulation remains fairly constant.
The geological history of the Earth follows the major geological events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers ( stratigraphy ). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left ...
In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continental blocks or cratons to form a single large landmass. [1] [2] [3] However, some geologists use a different definition, "a grouping of formerly dispersed continents", which leaves room for interpretation and is easier to apply to Precambrian times. [4]
The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles ), lying within the polar circles. These high latitudes are dominated by floating sea ice covering much of the Arctic Ocean in the north, and by the ...
The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere of Earth. It contains 80% of the total mass of the planetary atmosphere and 99% of the total mass of water vapor and aerosols, and is where most weather phenomena occur. [1] From the planetary surface of the Earth, the average height of the troposphere is 18 km (11 mi; 59,000 ft) in the ...