Mediterranean climate

“ The climate is tempered also by the warmth of the sea itself. The bar at the west entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar (p. xxix) keeps out the cold water of the deep Atlantic, but allows the influx of the warmer surface-water to compensate for what the Mediterranean loses by evaporation. This loss would otherwise amount to a depth of 10–15 ft. per annum. The influx of water from the Atlantic causes a current to flow along the North African coast from west to east, but its thermal effects are soon lost. In summer the surface of the Mediterranean is heated by the sun up to 75–82° Fahr. ”

“ The Mediterranean is, after all, the sea of the world: we associate it with everything classic and beautiful, either in art or climate; and although we know well that its lazy, saint-ridden seamen, and its picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed, vessels would fly before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a Channel boatman would consider a mere puff,—still there is something racily and specially picturesque about the black-eyed, swarthy, copper ear-ringed rascals, and something dearly familiar about the high, graceful peaks of the sails around which they cluster. ”

“ After the formation of the Calabrian beach the whole Mediterranean region was elevated above its present level. This elevation must be contemporaneous with the period of maximum elevation in north-west Europe associated with the great Mindelian glaciation. It is suggested that the “sill” of the outlet channel at Gibraltar was raised above the level of the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean became, first a closed salt lake, and then a pair of lakes, the eastern fresh draining into the western, which was salt, the two being separated by a ridge of land between Italy and Tunis. ”

“ The Mediterranean climate that is influential most of the time in the south has mild, damp winters but hot, dry, rain-free summers. The Stara Planina marks the lower limits of the area in which continental air masses circulate freely in typical circumstances. In the area between them and the Danube River there is an extension of the climate that is common to east-central Europe and adjoining regions of the Soviet Union. ”

“ They who only know the shores of the Mediterranean in the winter months, and have but enjoyed the contrast—and what a contrast!—between our inky skies and rain-charged atmosphere with that glorious expanse of blue heaven and that air of exciting elasticity,—they, I say, can still have no conception of the real ecstasy of life in a southern climate till they have experienced a summer beside the tideless sea. ”

“ The climate of the Ocean parting from the strong, rough, ever-heaving waters of the channel, becomes extremely mild at the South of Brittany, milder still in the Gironde, and mildest of all in the land-locked basin of Arcachon.
The air of the Mediterranean, which we may call circular, has its highest note in the dry, though keen, climate of Provence and Genoa, becomes more mild as you approach Pisa, milder and less variable in Sicily, [343] and at Algiers attains a wonderful mildness and regularity. ”

“ To the north of this line, therefore, the climate is more or less affected even in summer by the anti-trades.
It must not be supposed that the region of the trade winds and of the anti-trades lie side by side. Between the two there is a zone of variable winds, but in general terms we can explain the peculiarities of the Mediterranean rainfall by saying that the region [90] lies within or just at the edge of the dry trades in summer, and within the zone of the moist anti-trades in winter. ”

“ The Mediterranean has given rise to so many great and powerful nations, only from the superior advantages which it afforded for commerce during the long infancy of navigation. The number and fertility of its islands, the serenity of its climate, the smoothness of its waters, the smallness of its entrance, which although of itself sufficient to indicate to the skilful pilot the proximity of the ocean, is still more clearly defined by the Pillars of Hercules, towering on each side of it, and forming land-marks not to be mistaken by the timid, the inexperienced, or the bewildered. ”

“ Hence the Mediterranean region is characteristically one of winter rains, the distinctive feature becoming less sharply defined from south to north, and the amount of total annual fall increasing in the same direction. The climate becomes more continental in type from west to east, but there are great local irregularities—the elevated plateaus of Algeria and Spain cause a rise of pressure in winter and delay the rainy seasons: the rains set in earlier in the west than in the east, and the total fall is greater. ”

“ The lowlands and the lower mountains of the south have a Mediterranean climate; weather in the northern and eastern highlands is dominated by the continental air masses that persist over central and Eastern Europe. Overall rainfall is plentiful throughout the country, but most areas receive it seasonally. ”

“ You know that when you descend a coal-pit 1300 feet deep you get into a very warm temperature indeed. Now the Dead Sea is 1300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and the consequence is that you have around the Dead Sea a tropical or sub-tropical climate, and you have sub-tropical products.
“At the northern end of the Holy Land you find yourself at the starting point of the Jordan, which, being 1000 feet above the Mediterranean at the grotto of Banias, descends so rapidly that it is only a few feet above the sea level at Lake Huleh. ”

“ Midway between these semi-aquatic Polynesians and those Arctic tribes who are forced out upon the deep, to struggle with it rather than associate with it, we find the inhabitants of the Mediterranean islands and peninsulas, who are favored by the mild climate and the tideless, fogless, stormless character of their sea. While such a body of water invites intimacy, it does not breed a hardy or bold race of navigators ”

“ Of the three races, Mediterranean man seems to be perfectly adapted to a dry region, with deficient pasture, naturally clothed with a drought-resisting type of forest. As he prospered he spread beyond his own region, with the result that he reached a region markedly different in climate and vegetation from his own, to which his adaptation was never very perfect. ”

“ The Mediterranean coast region and the extreme southern extension have a dry climate that is tempered by rains during certain seasons. Besides the continental distribution of rainfall, there is a seasonal variation in the amount received in different latitudes. In the regions near the equator rain may fall during every month of the year, but the periods of greatest precipitation occur when the sun is nearly vertical, in spring and fall. Away from the equator there is generally but one wet season. See articles on countries of Africa.
Flora. ”

“ The effect of a mass of land stretching, with but a slight break at the Mediterranean area, from the range of the Atlas to the extreme north of Europe, must necessarily have tended to produce extremes of climate similar to those which we now witness in masses of land similarly situated, such as Northern Asia and North America. ”

“ Even in the Mediterranean this was a time of severe climate. On the eastern side of Gibraltar there are breccias, known as the “Older Limestone Agglomerate,” which reach a thickness of 100 feet in places, and are now much weathered. Similar agglomerates are found in Malta. These resemble the “head” of the south of England, and appear to be due to frost action in a severe climate. In Corsica there are traces of four periods of mountain glaciation, and the two oldest of these are provisionally correlated with the Gunzian and Mindelian of the Alps. ”

“ The peculiar conditions of the British Islands illustrate the fact that climate does not depend upon latitude alone, but may be greatly modified by local conditions, especially by the distribution of land and water, and the direction of the wind.
Let us now sum up what has been said in regard to the main types of climate found in Europe. Round the Mediterranean basin we have an area with mild winters and warm summers, where the rain tends to fall during the winter season, making summer a period of drought. ”

“ The area so flooded, however, would bear to the whole area of Sahara something like the same proportion that Windsor Park bears to the entire surface of England. This is the true truth about that stupendous undertaking, which is to create a new Mediterranean in the midst of the Dark Continent, and to modify the climate of Northern Europe to something like the condition of the Glacial Epoch. A new Dead Sea would be much nearer the mark, and the only way Northern Europe would feel the change, if it felt it at all, would be in a slight fall in the price of dates in the wholesale market. ”

“ Each glaciation of northern Europe must have been a time of greater rainfall as well as of lower temperature in the Mediterranean. The glacial anticyclone in the north displaced the storms from the Atlantic, which now mostly either skirt the north-west coast of Norway or pass across Denmark into the Baltic. These storms had to take a more southerly course, and entered the Mediterranean basin either across the south of France or in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar: tracks which are still occasionally followed in winter. ”

“ It is a Mediterranean with a more equable climate, warmer winters and cooler summers, than the North Mediterranean shore can offer; it is an Italy whose mountains and valleys give almost every variety of elevation and temperature. ”

“ That the Mediterranean generally, and its beautiful boundaries of Alps and Apennines, with its deeply indented and irregular shores, forms the most delightful region of the known earth, in all that relates to climate, productions, and physical formation, will be readily enough conceded by the traveller. ”

“ The Mediterranean group touches abruptly on the preceding one, and derives its name from the Mediterranean Sea, of which it occupies the whole periphery. In all the regions within this perimeter a similar forest flora covers with the same species a soil generally hilly, under a climate dry and warm, while subject to violent contrasts. The evergreen oaks, other oaks with semi-persistent foliage, the laurel, olive, pomegranate, terebinths, some of the maples, the oleander, and the carob ”

“ None of the rivers are navigable to any distance from their mouths, and in the absence of good means of communication the very rich resources of the plateau in minerals and agricultural produce have hitherto been little deve loped. Owing to the different elevations and varied aspects of the land towards the Euxiue, ^Egean, and Mediterranean, the climate is extremely diversified, presenting all the transitions from intense summer heat along most of the seaboard to severe winters on the lofty tablelands of the interior, which are exposed to biting winds from the Russian steppes. ”

“ In Europe, the absence of mountain barriers across the course of these westerly winds from Norway to central Spain, and the unobstructed avenue offered to them by the Mediterranean Sea during fall and winter, enable all the Atlantic's mitigating influences of warmth and moisture to penetrate inland, and temper the climate of Europe as far east as St. ”

“ The possession of Central European and Mediterranean climates, that shade into one another without any sharp line of demarcation, is a great advantage to France. If climatic differences approach one another in too great a contrast, clefts in development are likely to occur, such as the gap between the Northern and the Southern States in America, and that between North and South Queensland. ”

“ On the northern shores the climates of each nation are nearly duplicates of the climates of her neighbours to the east and the west; consequently, these nations all cultivate the same staples, and have wants that are similar: for a commerce among themselves, therefore, they lack the main elements, viz., difference of production, and the diversity of wants which are the consequence of variety of climates. To reach these, the Mediterranean people have had to encounter the tedious navigation and the sometimes difficult egress—just described—from their sea. ”

“ Books on Algeria, see p. 175; on Athens, see p. 508; on Cairo, see p. 444; on the Canary Islands, see p. 32; on Carthage, see p. 343; on Constantinople, see p. 542; on Cordova, see p. 69; on Granada and the Alhambra, see pp. 65, 80; on Jerusalem, see p. 473; on Madeira, see p. 20; on Morocco, see pp. 97, 98; on Seville, see p. 61; on Tebessa, see p. 315; on Timgad, see p. 289; on Tunisia, see p. 325.
xiii INTRODUCTION.
I. Season and Plan of Tour. Health. Season of Tour. The mildness of the climate (p. xxxv) makes travelling pleasant in the Mediterranean lands at almost any season. ”

“ The sky is dull and sad to-day, and so the Mediterranean is grey. Even where the low-lying horizon clouds have parted a little to let through a far-away memory of sunlight, it is only a whiter grey light that outlines the margin of water and sky, and where the sea’s surface is broken into ripples by the softest of stirring breezes, the harmonies of shadows and relief are still in faint and faded colour-scales. ”

“ Looking down, the Mediterranean is at your feet. There go the ships, with boats from either shore which dip their long lateen-sails as sea-gulls dip their wings, and sometimes fly over the waves as a bird flies through the air, even while large ships labor against the wind. As the current from the Atlantic flows steadily into the Mediterranean, if perchance the wind should blow from the same quarter, it is not an easy matter to get out of the Straits. Ships that have made the whole course of the Mediterranean are baffled here in the throat of the sea. ”