Consider the following statements with respect to the climate of Western Europe :
1. Western Europe receives rainfall in all months.
2. Western Europe is located in the belt of Westerlies.
Which of th

Question

Consider the following statements with respect to the climate of Western Europe :
1. Western Europe receives rainfall in all months.
2. Western Europe is located in the belt of Westerlies.
Which of the above statements is/are correct ?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Both 1 and 2. The two statements are not independent facts; the second is the cause of the first. Western Europe — the British Isles, France, the Low Countries, western Germany, Denmark and the Norwegian seaboard — lies between roughly 45° and 60° north, squarely inside the belt of prevailing westerlies that blows from the sub-tropical high towards the sub-polar low in both hemispheres between about 30° and 60° of latitude. Those westerlies reach Europe having crossed the North Atlantic, so they arrive warm for the latitude, laden with moisture, and carrying a near-continuous procession of depressions along the polar front. The consequence is the climate that geographers call the marine west coast, oceanic or British type — small annual and daily temperature ranges, mild winters far warmer than the latitude would suggest, and precipitation in every month of the year, generally between 50 and 250 centimetres annually. 'No dry season' is in fact the formal defining criterion of this climate type in the Köppen scheme, which is precisely what statement 1 asserts. Both statements are therefore correct and the answer is (a). One honest refinement to carry with you: 'Western Europe' in the strictest political sense also reaches down to Iberia and Mediterranean France, and those southern margins DO have a dry summer, because the westerly belt swings polewards in summer and leaves them under sub-tropical high pressure. The statement is being made about the oceanic core of Western Europe, which is the standard textbook usage, and on that reading it is exact.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Both statements are in fact correct, so this option fails twice over. Rejecting statement 2 usually comes from confusing the westerlies with the trade winds, or from a vague sense that Europe is 'too far north' for a named planetary wind belt. It is not: the westerlies occupy 30°–60° in each hemisphere, and north-west Europe sits in the heart of that band, which is why its depressions and fronts arrive from the Atlantic and travel eastwards.  (c) Accepts the rainfall but rejects the wind belt, which is the wrong half to doubt — the wind belt is the reason for the rainfall. Western Europe lies in the mid-latitude westerlies, and it is those winds, crossing a warm North Atlantic and steering polar-front depressions inland, that deliver moisture in every month. If you accept year-round rain here and deny the westerlies, you are left with no mechanism to explain it.  (d) Accepts the westerlies but denies year-round rainfall. This is the most defensible of the wrong answers and it usually comes from importing the Mediterranean pattern — hot dry summer, wet mild winter — into the whole of western Europe. That regime belongs to southern Europe, to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. North-west Europe's oceanic climate has no dry season at all; rain falls in all twelve months, with a mild autumn and winter maximum in the British Isles and along the Norwegian coast.

Concept: Europe west of about 15° East is divided among three broad climatic regimes, and the divider is how far the planetary wind belts migrate with the sun. North-west Europe stays in the westerlies all year and gets the marine west coast climate — cool summers, mild winters, rain in every month. Southern Europe swings between the westerlies in winter and the sub-tropical high in summer, giving the Mediterranean climate — wet mild winters, hot dry summers. Eastern Europe, cut off from the Atlantic by distance, has a continental climate with cold winters and a summer rainfall maximum. The warmth of the north-western regime is amplified by the North Atlantic Drift, the eastward continuation of the Gulf Stream, which carries warm water to the European seaboard and keeps ports such as Bergen and Murmansk far milder than their latitude allows.

State PCS 2024 Q75 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q75 — Geography PYQ with Answer