The northern region of Europe has several definitions. A restrictive definition may describe northern Europe as being roughly north of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, which is about 54°N, or may be based on other geographical factors such as climate and ecology.
Climate
The climate is mainly Oceanic climate (Cfb), Humid continental climate (Dfb), Subarctic climate (Dfc and Dsc) and Tundra (ET).
Geography
Northern Europe might be defined roughly to include some or all of the following areas: British Isles, Fennoscandia, the peninsula of Jutland, the Baltic plain that lies to the east, and the many islands that lie offshore from mainland northern Europe and the main European continent. In some cases, Greenland is also included, although it is only politically European, comprising part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and not considered to be geographically in Europe.
The area is partly mountainous, including the northern volcanic islands of Iceland and Jan Mayen, and the mountainous western seaboard, Scotland and Scandinavia, and also often includes part of the large plain east of the Baltic Sea.
The entire region's climate is at least mildly affected by the Gulf Stream. From the west climates vary from maritime and maritime subarctic climates. In the north and central climates are generally subarctic or Arctic and to the east climates are mostly subarctic and temperate/continental.
Just as both climate and relief are variable across the region, so too is vegetation, with sparse tundra in the north and high mountains, boreal forest on the north-eastern and central regions temperate coniferous forests (formerly of which a majority was in the Scottish Highlands and southwestern Norway) and temperate broadleaf forests growing in the south, west and temperate east.
Classifications
There are various definitions of northern Europe which always include the Nordic countries, often the British Isles and Baltic states, and sometimes Greenland.
UN geoscheme classification
The United Nations geoscheme is a system devised by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) which divides the countries of the world into regional and subregional groups, based on the M49 coding classification. The partition is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories.
In the UN geoscheme, the following countries are classified as being in northern Europe:
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
Iceland
Ireland
Latvia
Lithuania
Norway
Sweden
United Kingdom
as well as the dependent areas:
Åland
Channel Islands
Bailiwick of Guernsey
Bailiwick of Jersey
Faroe Islands
Isle of Man
Svalbard and Jan Mayen
EuroVoc
EuroVoc is a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, giving definitions of terms for official use. In the definition of "northern Europe", the following countries are included:
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Denmark
Finland
Iceland
Norway
Sweden
as well as the dependent area:
Faroe Islands
In this classification Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the United Kingdom and Ireland are included in Western Europe.
CIA World Factbook
In the CIA World Factbook, the description of each country includes information about "Location" under the heading "Geography", where the country is classified into a region. The following countries are included in their classification "northern Europe":
Denmark
Finland
Iceland
Norway
Sweden
as well as the dependent areas:
Faroe Islands
Jan Mayen
Svalbard
In this classification Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the United Kingdom and Ireland are included in Western Europe, while Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are included in Eastern Europe.
World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions
The World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions is a biogeographical system developed by the international Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) organization, formerly the International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases. The WGSRPD standards, like other standards for data fields in botanical databases, were developed to promote "the wider and more effective dissemination of information about the world's heritage of biological organisms for the benefit of the world at large". The system provides clear definitions and codes for recording plant distributions at four scales or levels, from "botanical continents" down to parts of large countries. The following countries are included in their classification of "northern Europe":
Denmark
Finland