1.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
2.
Wikimedia Commons
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Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound, and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, the repository contains over 38 million media files. In July 2013, the number of edits on Commons reached 100,000,000, the project was proposed by Erik Möller in March 2004 and launched on September 7,2004. The expression educational is to be according to its broad meaning of providing knowledge. Wikimedia Commons itself does not allow fair use or uploads under non-free licenses, for this reason, Wikimedia Commons always hosts freely licensed media and deletes copyright violations. The default language for Commons is English, but registered users can customize their interface to use any other user interface translations. Many content pages, in particular policy pages and portals, have also translated into various languages. Files on Wikimedia Commons are categorized using MediaWikis category system, in addition, they are often collected on individual topical gallery pages. While the project was proposed to also contain free text files. In 2012, BuzzFeed described Wikimedia Commons as littered with dicks, in 2010, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger reported Wikimedia Commons to the FBI for hosting sexualized images of children known as lolicon. Wales responded to the backlash from the Commons community by voluntarily relinquishing some site privileges, over time, additional functionality has been developed to interface Wikimedia Commons with the other Wikimedia projects. Specialized uploading tools and scripts such as Commonist have been created to simplify the process of uploading large numbers of files. In order to free content photos uploaded to Flickr, users can participate in a defunct collaborative external review process. The site has three mechanisms for recognizing quality works, one is known as Featured pictures, where works are nominated and other community members vote to accept or reject the nomination. This process began in November 2004, another process known as Quality images began in June 2006, and has a simpler nomination process comparable to Featured pictures. Quality images only accepts works created by Wikimedia users, whereas Featured pictures additionally accepts nominations of works by third parties such as NASA, the three mentioned processes select a slight part from the total number of files. However, Commons collects files of all quality levels, from the most professional level across simple documental, files with specific defects can be tagged for improvement and warning or even proposed for deletion but there exists no process of systematic rating of all files. The site held its inaugural Picture of the Year competition, for 2006, all images that were made a Featured picture during 2006 were eligible, and voted on by eligible Wikimedia users during two rounds of voting
3.
Ural Mountains
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The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and they have rich resources, including metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century the mountains have contributed significantly to the sector of the Russian economy. As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock and it might have been a borrowing from either Turkic stone belt, or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century, in Bashkortostan there has been a legend about a hero named Ural and he sacrificed his life for the sake of his people and they poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Possibilities include Bashkir үр elevation, upland or Mansi ур ала mountain peak, top of the mountain, tatischev believes that this oronym is set to belt and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- gird. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar-Chuvash dialects, hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. Shumilov suggested a Mongolian origin, Khural Uul, that is, the Evenk geographical term era mountain has also been theorized. Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Mansi word urr meaning a mountain, turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that ural in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was stone belt. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, in 1430 the town of Solikamsk was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472, with the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers, the Stroganovs land provided the staging ground for Yermaks incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Ural from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581, in 1597 Babinovs road was built across the Ural from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the foothills of the Middle Ural. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones, iron and copper smelting works emerged
4.
Gulag
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The Gulag was the government agency that administered and controlled the Soviet forced-labor camp system during Joseph Stalins rule from the 1930s up until the 1950s. The term is commonly used to reference any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union. The camps housed a range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas, the Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The agencys full name was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and it was administered first by the State Political Administration, later by the NKVD and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s, the author likened the scattered camps to a chain of islands and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. Natalya Reshetovskaya, the wife of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said in her memoirs that The Gulag Archipelago was based on folklore as opposed to objective facts. In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates and 423 labor colonies in the USSR, todays major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners. About 14 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953, according to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953. According with other estimates, at the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of more than 465,000 were political prisoners. The institutional analysis of the Soviet concentration system is complicated by the distinction between GULAG and GUPVI. In many ways the GUPVI system was similar to GULAG and its major function was the organization of foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union. The top management of GUPVI came from the GULAG system, the major noted distinction from GULAG was the absence of convicted criminals in the GUPVI camps. Otherwise the conditions in both systems were similar, hard labor, poor nutrition and living conditions, and high mortality rate. According with the estimates, in total, during the period of the existence of GUPVI there were over 500 POW camps. According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934–53. Some independent estimates are as low as 1.6 million deaths during the period from 1929 to 1953. Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time
5.
Red Army
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The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
6.
Precipitation
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In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, graupel, Precipitation occurs when a portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor, so that the water condenses and precipitates. Thus, fog and mist are not precipitation but suspensions, because the vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated, Precipitation forms as smaller droplets coalesce via collision with other rain drops or ice crystals within a cloud. Short, intense periods of rain in scattered locations are called showers, moisture that is lifted or otherwise forced to rise over a layer of sub-freezing air at the surface may be condensed into clouds and rain. This process is active when freezing rain is occurring. A stationary front is often present near the area of freezing rain, provided necessary and sufficient atmospheric moisture content, the moisture within the rising air will condense into clouds, namely stratus and cumulonimbus. Eventually, the droplets will grow large enough to form raindrops. Lake-effect snowfall can be locally heavy, thundersnow is possible within a cyclones comma head and within lake effect precipitation bands. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation, on the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by compressional heating. The movement of the trough, or intertropical convergence zone. Precipitation is a component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing the fresh water on the planet. Approximately 505,000 cubic kilometres of water falls as precipitation each year,398,000 cubic kilometres of it over the oceans and 107,000 cubic kilometres over land. Given the Earths surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres, Climate classification systems such as the Köppen climate classification system use average annual rainfall to help differentiate between differing climate regimes. Precipitation may occur on celestial bodies, e. g. when it gets cold, Mars has precipitation which most likely takes the form of frost. Precipitation is a component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the planet. Approximately 505,000 km3 of water falls as precipitation each year,398,000 km3 of it over the oceans, given the Earths surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres. Mechanisms of producing precipitation include convective, stratiform, and orographic rainfall, Precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice
7.
Soviet Census (1989)
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The census found the total population to be 286,730,819 inhabitants. In 1989, the Soviet Union ranked as the third most populous in the world, above the United States, although it was well behind China and India. In 1989, about half of the Soviet Unions total population lived in the Russian SFSR, almost two-thirds of the population was urban, leaving the rural population with some 34. 3%. In this way, its gradual increase continued, as shown by the represented by 47. 9%,56. 3% and 62. 3% of 1959,1970 and 1979 respectively. The previous postwar censuses, conducted in 1959,1970 and 1979, had enumerated 208,826,650,241,720,134, and 262,436,227 inhabitants respectively. In 1990, the Soviet Union was more populated than both the United States and Canada together, having some 40 million more inhabitants than the U. S. alone. However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the next census was possibly planned for 1999. Research Guide to Russian and Soviet Censuses, Ithaca, Cornell University Press,1986, dewdney, Population change in the Soviet Union, 1979-1989, Geography, Vol.75, Pt.3, No. Subjects of Russia, on the www. statoids. com website
8.
Population density
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Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume, it is a quantity of type number density. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and most of the time to humans and it is a key geographical term. Population density is population divided by land area or water volume. Low densities may cause a vortex and lead to further reduced fertility. This is called the Allee effect after the scientist who identified it, commonly this may be calculated for a county, city, country, another territory, or the entire world. The worlds population is around 7,000,000,000, therefore, the worldwide human population density is around 7,000,000,000 ÷510,000,000 =13.7 per km2. If only the Earths land area of 150,000,000 km2 is taken into account and this includes all continental and island land area, including Antarctica. If Antarctica is also excluded, then population density rises to over 50 people per km2, thus, this number by itself does not give any helpful measurement of human population density. Several of the most densely populated territories in the world are city-states, microstates, cities with high population densities are, by some, considered to be overpopulated, though this will depend on factors like quality of housing and infrastructure and access to resources. Most of the most densely populated cities are in Southeast Asia, though Cairo, for instance, Milwaukee has a greater population density when just the inner city is measured, and the surrounding suburbs excluded. Arithmetic density, The total number of people / area of land, physiological density, The total population / area of arable land. Agricultural density, The total rural population / area of arable land, residential density, The number of people living in an urban area / area of residential land. Urban density, The number of people inhabiting an urban area / total area of urban land, ecological optimum, The density of population that can be supported by the natural resources. S. States by population density Selected Current and Historic City, Ward & Neighborhood Density
9.
Pechory
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Pechory is a town and the administrative center of Pechorsky District in Pskov Oblast, Russia. Its population in the 2010 Census was 11,195, having fallen from 13,056 recorded in the 2002 Census and 11,935 in the 1989 Census and this population includes a few hundred ethnic Estonians. It was founded as a posad in the 16th century near the Pskov-Caves Monastery, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Pechory was an important border stronghold. Boris Sheremetev began his campaign of 1701 in Pechory and the fortification was besieged by Swedes in the course of the Great Northern War in 1701 and 1703, after the war, Pechory lost its military significance. In the course of the administrative reform carried out in 1708 by Peter the Great, in 1727, separate Novgorod Governorate was split off and in 1772, Pskov Governorate was established, it existed as Pskov Viceroyalty between 1777 and 1796. In 1776, Pechory was granted rights and Pechorsky Uyezd was established, but in 1797, the uyezd was abolished. From February to December 1918, Pechory was occupied by the Germans, during the Estonian War of Independence, the town was occupied by the Estonian army on March 29,1919. Under the terms of the Tartu Peace Treaty, Pechory and the territory around it, called Setomaa, were given to Estonia in 1920. During the years between the World Wars, Petseri, as it was called at that time, was the center of Petseri County, under the Estonian rule, the town population more than doubled, predominantly due to arrival of ethnic Estonians. In May 1925, most of the owned by the Pskov-Caves Monastery was confiscated by the Estonian government. St. Peters Lutheran Church was built in 1926, after the annexation of Estonia by the Soviet Union in 1940, the town originally remained a part of the Estonian SSR. During World War II, the town was occupied by the German Army from July 10,1941 until August 11,1944, on January 16,1945, Pechory and most of Petseri County were transferred to Pskov Oblast of the Russian SFSR and Pechorsky District was established. In 1956, Pechory Secondary School No.2 was opened for Estonian-speaking students, Estonia is reported to have dropped this claim in November 1995. Within the framework of administrative divisions, Pechory serves as the center of Pechorsky District. As a municipal division, the town of Pechory, together with forty-two rural localities, is incorporated within Pechorsky Municipal District as Pechory Urban Settlement, Pechory is famous for the Russian Orthodox Pskov-Caves Monastery. Also, St. Peters Evangelical Lutheran church is situated in the town and it is famous for its historic organ. Закон №833-оз от5 февраля2009 г, Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования. Опубликован, Псковская правда, №20,10 февраля2009 г, Закон №420-оз от28 февраля2005 г
10.
Pechora River
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The Pechora River is a river in northwest Russia which flows north into the Arctic Ocean on the west side of the Ural Mountains. It lies mostly in the Komi Republic but the northernmost part crosses the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and it is 1,809 kilometres long and its basin is 322,000 square kilometres, or about the same size as Finland. By mean annual discharge it ranks third in Europe, after the Volga and Danube. Its discharge is about half that of the Danube and a more than its sister, the Northern Dvina River. West of its course is the Timan Ridge. East of the basin along the west flank of the Urals is the Yugyd Va National Park, also in the basin is the Virgin Komi Forests, the largest virgin forest in Europe. In the far northeast of the basin on the Usa River is the coal center of Vorkuta. The river was once an important transportation route, especially for travelling to northwest Siberia. Today a railroad runs southwest from Vorkuta to Moscow, the river rises in the Ural Mountains in the south-eastern corner of the Komi Republic. This area is part of the Pechora-Ilych Nature Reserve, on the other side of the Urals are the headwaters of the Northern Sosva River. The river flows south, then west and turns north near Yaksha which is the head of navigation for small boats, a portage led south to the Kama River basin. To the east is the upper Vychegda River, a branch of the Northern Dvina, the river then flows north to Pechora town, where the railway from Vorkuta crosses, then north to Ust-Usa where the Usa River joins from the east. The Pechora then curves northwest, west, and west southwest, izhma River joins from the south. It then flows further west to Ust-Tsilma where the Pizhma River joins from the southwest, the monthly averaged discharge values of the river have been registered since 1981 to 1993 years in village Oksino, located 141 km upstream from the mouth, they presented below as a diagram. Before the arrival of the railroad to the Pechora, an important way of travel to the region was via a portage road, from Cherdyn in the Kama River basin to Yaksha on the Pechora. However, no work was carried out on the route of the proposed canal, other than a triple nuclear explosion in 1971. The Pechora River was the source of the name of Pechorin – protagonist of the 1839 novel A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, Pechora in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
11.
Federal subjects of Russia
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Since March 18,2014, the Russian Federation constitutionally consists of 85 federal subjects, although the two most recently added subjects are internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Three Russian cities of importance have a status of both city and separate federal subject which comprises other cities and towns within federal city keeping old structure of postal address. In 1993, there were 89 federal subjects listed, by 2008, the number of federal subjects had been decreased to 83 because of several mergers. In 2014, Sevastopol and the Republic of Crimea became the 84th and 85th federal subjects of Russia, every federal subject has its own head, a parliament, and a constitutional court. Federal subjects have their own constitution and legislation, subjects have equal rights in relations with federal government bodies. The federal subjects have equal representation—two delegates each—in the Federation Council and they do, however, differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy. Composition of post-Soviet Russia was formed during the history of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic within the USSR, the Federation Treaty was included in the text of the 1978 Constitution of the Russian SFSR. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the system became de jure closer to other modern federal states with a republican form of government in the world. There are several groupings of Russian regions, Federal subjects should not be confused with the eight Federal districts which are not subdivisions of Russia, are much larger and each encompass many federal subjects. Federal districts were created by Executive Order of the President of Russia specially for presidential envoys, an official government translation of the Constitution of Russia in Article 5 states,1. Another translation of the Constitution of Russia gives for article 65, each federal subject belongs to one of the following types, b. ^ According to Article 13 of the Charter of Leningrad Oblast, however, St. Petersburg is not officially named to be the administrative center of the oblast. ^ According to Article 24 of the Charter of Moscow Oblast, however, Moscow is not officially named to be the administrative center of the oblast. ^ Not recognized internationally as a part of Russia, the merging process was finished on March 1,2008. No new mergers have been planned since March 2008, Федерального конституционного закона №7-ФКЗ от30 декабря2008 г. Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Российская газета, №237,25 декабря1993 г
12.
Sunshine duration
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It is a general indicator of cloudiness of a location, and thus differs from insolation, which measures the total energy delivered by sunlight over a given period. Sunshine duration is usually expressed in hours per year, or in hours per day, the first measure indicates the general sunniness of a location compared with other places, while the latter allows for comparison of sunshine in various seasons in the same location. Another often-used measure is percentage ratio of recorded bright sunshine duration, an important use of sunshine duration data is to characterize the climate of sites, especially of health resorts. This also takes account the psychological effect of strong solar light on human well-being. It is often used to promote tourist destinations, if the Sun were to be above the horizon 50% of the time for a standard year consisting of 8,760 hours, apparent maximal daytime duration would be 4,380 hours for any point on Earth. However, there are physical and astronomical effects that change that picture, namely, atmospheric refraction allows the Sun to be still visible even when it physically sets below the horizon. For that reason, average daytime is longest in polar areas, places on the Arctic Circle have the longest total annual daytime,4,647 hours, while the North Pole receives 4,575. Because of elliptic nature of the Earths orbit, the Southern Hemisphere is not symmetrical, the Equator has a total daytime of 4,422 hours per year. Given the theoretical maximum of daytime duration for a given location, bright sunshine hours represent the total hours when the sunlight is stronger than a specified threshold, as opposed to just visible hours. Visible sunshine, for example, occurs around sunrise and sunset, measurement is performed by instruments called sunshine recorders. For the specific purpose of sunshine duration recording, Campbell–Stokes recorders are used, when the intensity exceeds a pre-determined threshold, the tape burns. The total length of the trace is proportional to the number of bright hours. Another type of recorder is the Jordan sunshine recorder, newer, electronic recorders have more stable sensitivity than that of the paper tape. In 2003, the duration was finally defined as the period during which direct solar irradiance exceeds a threshold value of 120 W/m². The sky is clear in these regions, and fair weather is virtually perpetual, the descending branch of the Hadley cell and the long-term lack of atmospheric disturbances helps to explain the seemingly endless supply of sunny, cloud-free days in the deserts. Low clouding conditions are associated with rainfall shortage, as seen in these dry regions. In the belt encompassing northern Chad and the Tibesti Mountains, northern Sudan, southern Libya, some places in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula receive 3, 600–3,800 hours of bright sunshine annually. The largest sun-baked region in the world is North Africa, the sunniest month in the world is December in Eastern Antarctica, with almost 23 hours of bright sun daily
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