Geographical   Position.   Seas of the  Arctic  Ocean that Wash the Shores of Asia.

Map   Questions.

1. Show Asia on the globe and on the map of the hemispheres. In which hemisphere is Asia situated: in the Northern, Southern, Western or Eastern? Which oceans wash the shores of Asia?
2 Compare the scale of the map of Asia with that of Europe. Compare the sizes of the Caspian and Black Seas on both maps. How large would the map of Asia be if it had the same scale as the map of Europe?

Geographical Position and Size of Asia. Asia is the largest part of the world. Its area is 43,900,000 square kilometres, i.e., a little less than one-third of the land surface of the globe. Asia is four times the size of Europe.

Fig. 68. A polar station at Cape Chelyuskin. Soviet polar stations observe the weather, the state of the ice, the temperature of the water, etc.

Four oceans wash the shores of Asia. To the west and southwest Asia borders on two other parts of the world, Europe and Africa, being separated from them by conventional boundaries. As already stated, the boundary line between Asia and Europe runs along the eastern foothills of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea and the Kuma-Manych Depression.
The Suez Canal on the Isthmus of Suez is regarded as the boundary between Asia and Africa.
In the north-east Asia approaches the coast of America, only the shallow Bering Strait, 85 kilometres in width, sepa­rating the two.
Thus, Asia is either linked with the other parts of the world or situated close to them. This position has made it possible for Asia's vegetable and animal life and for its peoples to expand to other parts of the world.
The oceans bordering Asia form numerous seas off its shores, but these do not penetrate as deep inland as they do in Europe.

Seas of the Arctic Ocean. The northern coast of Asia is washed by the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean, whose central part around the North Pole is ice-clad throughout the year. Under the influence of ocean currents and winds, the ice-floes are continuously in motion drifting now in one direction, now in another.
In order to learn more about the Arctic Ocean, Soviet polar stations have been set up on the ice-floes, islands and coasts of the mainland (Fig. 68).
Along the coasts of Asia stretches a wide belt of shallow seas. These are a continuation of the mainland, which has sunk under water. Here islands separated by seas rise out of the Arctic
Ocean.
Off the Asiatic coast, east of Novaya Zemlya, is the Kara Sea with the Yamal Peninsula extending into it northward. East of the Kara Sea lies the large Taimyr Peninsula.
On this peninsula is situated Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of Eurasia named after the navigator Chelyus­kin, a member of the Great Northern Expedition. That Russian ex­pedition explored and mapped in the first half of the 18th century the northern coastline of Russia, a region hitherto unexplored. Chelyuskin was the first to determine the position of this northern­most cape.
The Taimyr Peninsula and the north-lying islands of Severnaya Zemlya separate the Kara from the Laptev Sea.
The Asian coastline along that sea was explored by the Laptev brothers, also members of the Great Northern Expedition.
The Laptev Sea is separated from the East Siberian Sea by the New Siberian Islands. Further east, off the northern coast of the Chukotsk Peninsula, lies the Chuckchee Sea.
All these seas lie to the north of the Arctic Circle, in the frigid zone. They are ice-clad for the greater part of the year, but melt in summer. The rivers flowing into the ocean from the south empty a considerable amount of comparatively warm water into it, clearing a passage along the northern coast of Asia for navigation. Even in summer, however, the north wind occasionally drifts huge blocks of ice from the Arctic Ocean toward the coast of Asia, and navigation is again blocked. In spite of these difficulties, however, the N « r t h-ern Shipping Route along the coasts of Asia is open to navigation. Towards the end of summer each year a great number of Soviet vessels, with the help of ice-breakers (including the power­ful atomic ice-breaker 'Lenin'), make their way from the Barents and White Seas through the Bering Strait to the Pacific Seas beyond.'
Questions and Assignments.
1.  Determine the latitude of Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost
point of Eurasia, and of Cape Piai, its southernmost point. How
many latitudinal degrees does Asia stretch from north to south?