Climate

As with its geology, Greece does not have a single climate (Admiralty 1944, Bintliff 1977). Our image of long dry summers and mild winters with occasional rain reflects the focus of foreign visitors on the

Figure 1.3 Average annual rainfall in Greece.

H. C. Darby et al., Naval Geographical Intelligence Handbook, Greece, vol. 1. London: Naval Intelligence Division 1944, Figure 59.

Southeast Mainland, the Aegean islands, and lowland Crete, where this description is appropriate.

The two key factors in the Greek climate are the country’s location within global climate belts, and the dominant lines of Greece’s physical geography. Greece lies in the path of the Westerly Winds, so that autumn and spring rainfall emanates from the Atlantic, but is much less intense than in Northwest Europe. The Westerly rainbelt decreases in strength the further south and east you go in the Mediterranean. Most of Modern Greece has the same latitude as Southern Spain, Southern Italy, and Sicily, making all these regions strikingly more arid than the rest of Southern Europe. In summer the country lies within a hot dry weather system linking Southern Europe to North Africa. In winter cold weather flows fTom the North Balkans.

The internal physical landforms of the country also have a major effect on the distribution of rainfall, snow, and frost, and temperatures through the year. The Alpine Orogeny stamped the Mainland with mountain blocks running Northwest to Southeast. On Crete these ranges swing East-West toward Anatolia, so its high mountains form an island backbone on this alignment, but the relative depression of the Aegean Sea caused a tilting of the island, leaving its western third far more elevated. These Alpine obstacles, rising in the west and central sectors of the Greek Mainland and Crete, force the Westerly rains to deposit the major part of their load along the West face of Greece and in Western Crete, making the Eastern Mainland, the Aegean Islands, and Eastern Crete lie in rainshadow, thus restricting the available rainfall for plants and humans (Figure 1.3).

Temperature, rainfall, and frost-snow also vary according to altitude, and Greece is a land of rapid altitudinal contrasts. No part of the broadest landmass, the Northern Mainland, is more than 140 km from the sea, whilst for the Peloponnese the most inland point is 45 km distant, yet in these short spans one can move (sometimes in a few hours), from sea level to the high mountain zone. With height come lower temperatures and more snow-frost, milder summers, and more severe winters than experienced in the favored summer and winter tourist destinations of the Aegean Islands and coasts of the Southeast Mainland, but in compensation, there is less risk of drought and life-threatening heatwaves. In the drier zones of Greece drought is a constant threat to crop cultivation and animal-raising, and is frequent enough to pose an adaptive challenge for any past Greek society with a dense population and elaborate division of labor.

The powerful effects of geology and climate in creating the diverse landscapes of Greece are also dominant in the mosaic of natural and artificial vegetation belts which one meets in traveling from South to North, or East to West, and even more clearly from coast to inland mountains.