North America, which includes Greenland and the Caribbean islands, is the world’s third-biggest continent, covering 9,358,340 square miles (24,238,000 square kilometers). It is entirely located in the Northern Hemisphere. One of the most significant features of the North American mainland, which is entirely located on the North American tectonic plate (Plate Tectonic), is its amazing variation in regional physical landscapes. During the previous Ice Age, a massive sheet of ice swept across the continent, scouring the terrain, deepening the depressions that today hold the Great Lakes, and depositing fertile soil on the central plains.
Climatic Condition of North America
The diversity of landscapes is matched by a variety of climates. Except for the southern point of Florida, there are no places of pure tropical climate in North America to speak of — but there is a great lot of variety. North America has both moist coastal zones and arid inland, as well as well-watered plains and bone-dry deserts. Commercial farming thrives in the Cf (humid subtropical) and Df (humid continental) climates. The more north you travel, the colder it becomes. Even if warmer offshore seas provide some relief to coastal communities, the rigors of continentality (inland climate environment remote from ameliorating maritime influences) persist. Hot summers, cold winters, and little precipitation make these higher-latitude continental interiors tough to live in.
The influence of the Pacific (Pacific Oceanic Bottom Relief) Mountains on inland places may be seen throughout the west, particularly in the United States. When moisture-laden air arrives from the ocean, the mountain wall pulls it higher, cools it, condenses the moisture in it, and generates rain, the rain for which Seattle, Portland, and other Pacific Northwest cities are (inch) famous.
Most of the moisture has been removed from the air by the time it passes the mountains and drops on the landward side, and the forests on the ocean-facing side quickly give way to scrub and brush. This rain shadow effect runs over the Great Plains; North America does not become moist again until the Gulf of Mexico transports humid tropical air northward via the Mississippi Basin into the eastern interior.
In a very general way, therefore, and not including the coastal strips along the Pacific, nature divides North America into an arid west and a humid east.
North America is accessible to air masses from the freezing north and tropical south between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. In the winter, southward-moving polar fronts drive icy, bone-dry air masses deep into the center of the continent, freezing even Memphis and Atlanta; in the summer, hot and humid tropical air rushes northward from the Gulf of Mexico, giving Chicago and Toronto a taste of the tropics.
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Geography of North America: Important Geographical Facts
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