The One Minute Geographer: This Fragile Earth (3) Land, Water and Other Hemispheres
We’ll start with the two exciting spheres: The land and water hemispheres! The earth’s surface is about 70% water, 30% land. (Technically 71%, 29%.) To demonstrate this, get that old globe out of your attic and turn it so that as you look at it, it’s centered on New Zealand. That’s colloquially called the ‘water hemisphere’ because that’s the half of the earth that is mostly water. (89% water, 11% land.)
Now turn the globe the opposite way and center it on France. That’s the way you can see the most land at one time — the ‘land hemisphere’ — and even in this view, water still predominates — 53% water, 47% land., But that’s the best view you can get of the most land at one view on the globe.
You know about the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, separated by the Equator, considered the 0-degree line. Lines or ‘parallels’ of latitude go north and south from the Equator reaching 90 degrees at each pole. The Equator can be defined by earth-sun relationships and also as the line that creates a plane that is perpendicular to the angle of the earth’s rotation.
