Europe on a perfectly clear day

Europe on a perfectly clear day Today’s Video of the Day comes from the European Space Agency’s Earth from Space series and features a look at what Europe would look like with zero cloud cover on a perfectly clear day.

Because it would be nearly impossible to catch a day without a single cloud over the continent, this mosaic composite image was created using several different cloud-free images taken by the Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite.

The southern regions are more mountainous, while moving north the terrain descends from the high Alps, Pyrenees and Carpathians, through hilly uplands, into broad, low northern plains, which are vast in the east. This extended lowland is known as the Great European Plain and at its heart lies the North German Plain. 

This description is simplified. Sub-regions such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Peninsula contain their own complex features, as does mainland Central Europe itself, where the relief contains many plateaus, river valleys and basins that complicate the general trend.  Also shown above in Europe on a perfectly clear dayThe Gulf Stream is nicknamed “Europe’s central heating”, because it makes Europe’s climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be

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By Rory Arnold, Earth.com Staff Writer

Video Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)