The climate of North America ranges from the frost-free tropical of southernmost Florida to the perennial ice and snow of the northern-most islands of the Canadian Archipelago, from the rain-drenched mountains of the northwest coast to the drought-ridden deserts of the southwestern United States. Within the limits set by these extremes is a variety of climates that results from the interplay of atmospheric systems with the complex geography of this large landmass. Its great size (about 25 million km2), the span of latitudes from about 25°N to 80°N, the configuration and alignment of its shorelines, plus the distribution of major landform regions have generated a diversity of climates that very closely resemble those of the much larger continent of Eurasia within the same latitudes.
The scattering of persistent ice fields in the Canadian Arctic from the northern Ellesmere southward to Baffin Island may be viewed as a fragmented extension of the north polar ice cap that dominates most of...
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Rumney, G.R. (1998). North America: climate. In: Encyclopedia of Hydrology and Lakes. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht . https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4497-6_166
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