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Finland is taiga bordering on tundra. Shifted 20° North, Finland would be tundra bordering on ice pack.
At 80° N, climate here would be a more continental version of Svalbard's, probably similar to places like Dikson and Tiksi on Russia's northern coast. Tundra with ultra long and cold winters and very short, cool summers.
The four month polar day and night (two months of which barely gets nautical twilight) would be interesting. We'd probably have to carry firearms to ward off polar bears outside settlements like in Svalbard now. As a cold lover I wouldn't mind the shift very much at all.
history would be very different, since europe wouldn't have been able to support the intensive farming that it has. It probably would have instead remained sparsely populated with a relatively small number of hunter-gatherers. I wonder when and if colonization of the Americas would have happened, and if so, by whom. Many questions to consider.
Finland is taiga bordering on tundra. Shifted 20° North, Finland would be tundra bordering on ice pack.
Bordering is perhaps a bit excessive, as there's really no real tundra in Scandinavia, except for a few isolated patches in the Norwegian mountains. But yes, I would probably be sitting on an iceberg right now. In fact, I don't think most of us would even exist.
???????? Wtf are you guys talking about? I assume it's something important that I should know or at least have somewhat of an idea about but honestly I don't. I'm guessing it has at least a little bit to do with the classic rock band Rush.
Scandinavia would have polar climates, and London at 71N would either be a tundra or a cold subpolar climate. Berlin would be at 72N, and would have a bit more of a continental influence, so it might be like a more oceanic version of northern Alaska, or a more continental version of Iceland's climate. Rome would be at 61N and would likely have a climate similar to Scotland. Athens at 57N would also have a climate similar to Scotland. These are just guesses, though. I think it would be an improvement, at least by my standards.
Assuming Africa, the Asian landmass east of the Urals and the Mideast didn't move at all, we'd be looking at a near 1400 mile wide opening to a much larger Mediterranian Sea. There would be another opening between Greece and Turkey, say, at or near the Bosphorus and we would see the ocean overwhelming the Black Sea and rear all the way up the west side of the Ural Mountains as far north as Perm.
This massively enlarged Mediterranian Sea would have a much better connection to Atlantic circulation patterns and low pressure systems that run aground in southern Europe and North Aftrica today would riding that much more water to maintain clear sailing all the way to the Levant. The eastern shores would be much wetter and stormier and the northern portions would have a climate similar but slightly dryer than that of the Low Countries and southern Scandinavia than at present. Where Lebanon and Israel sit today, expect much wetter winters and more ocean-modified summers.
The Urals would be dealing with an enhanced "lake effect" situation from late October through the begining of January and have a whole lot more snow fall on them than they do now. The northern reaches would be heavily glaciated.
In a good year, Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt get five and one inch of rainfall annually today. With this new and hypothetical configuration, expect up to three times as much rainfall in Alexandria and maybe 10 times as much in Cairo. Cairo would still be a desert but a much wetter one. The Pyramids, for example would be more thoroughly eroded and the Spinx might not have existed at all.
Southwestern Europe would look a lot like the northern U.K. with Portugal dealing with the same sort of winter gloom and pisswilly summers the outer Hebridies get today. Oporto's climate would be nothing like today's and would look more like Lerwicks. Bordeaux, in France would be a match for Reykjavik. Inland regions, such as Northern Germany, Poland, Belarus would be tundra at minimum and given how wet these places get in winter now (and they wouldn't dry out much under this new scenario) and how little summer they would have, might even be ice covered. Scandinavia would look now like it did 20000 years ago.
This modified Europe probably wouldn't have much of an effect on the Gulf Stream so the southern portions would still feel its influence. Great Britain would be well to the north and it's climate would be much harsher. Might even be uninhabitable. Europe's East Cost nations, such as Romania and Bulgaria would have a climate much like northern Labrador and the Ukraine, probably like Baffin Island.
These altered climates would have had a tremendous impact on Europe's cultural history and what colonization of the new world that might have occurred may well have come from Asia or Africa instead.
Winter would be duller for longer. Not just shorter daylight hours, but also sun too weak to burn off low cloud, as we see in Russia. Norway would be uninhabitable.
Winter would be duller for longer. Not just shorter daylight hours, but also sun too weak to burn off low cloud, as we see in Russia. Norway would be uninhabitable.
Norway has settlements at 80° N even now. I'd like to know why a simple tundra climate is uninhabitable.
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