Subarctic

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Subarctic" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of humid continental regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Fennoscandia, Northwestern Russia, Siberia, and the Cairngorms. Generally, subarctic regions fall between 50°N and 70°N latitude, depending on local climates. Precipitation is usually low, and vegetation is characteristic of the taiga.

Daylight at these latitudes is quite extreme between summer and winter due to its high latitude. Near the summer solstice for instance, subarctic regions can experience an all-night period of either civil, nautical, or astronomical twilight (or in the northern reaches full daylight), but without true night, since the sun never dips more than 18 degrees below the horizon. Noctilucent clouds are best observed within this range of latitude.