The twelve farthest places are all in the southern hemisphere
CouchColumbus's dictionary holds 524 cities. Of those, 89 sit below the equator — 17.0%. The other 435 are in the north. Fold a world map in half top to bottom and only one city in six lands in the lower half.
Count them in 15-degree bands and you can see where it splits.
| Latitude band | North | South |
|---|---|---|
| 0–15° | 60 | 29 |
| 15–30° | 83 | 38 |
| 30–45° | 176 | 18 |
| 45–60° | 102 | 4 |
| 60–90° | 14 | 0 |
Near the equator it is roughly even. The split happens above 30 degrees. There are 176 cities between 30 and 45° N and 18 between 30 and 45° S — a factor of ten. Go below 45° S and only four remain in the dictionary.
- Ushuaia (Argentina) — 54.80° S
- El Calafate (Argentina) — 50.34° S
- Dunedin (New Zealand) — 45.87° S
- Queenstown (New Zealand) — 45.03° S
The same band in the north contains Paris, London, Vancouver, Vienna and Prague. There are 116 cities above 45° N.
Half of it is because there is no land
Is the dictionary biased? Half yes, half no. Lay a 0.5-degree grid over the land shapes used for the map and measure by area and you get this.
- 39.4% of the northern hemisphere's surface is land
- 18.4% of the southern hemisphere's surface is land
- Excluding Antarctica, the south drops to 15.7%
The southern hemisphere has less than half the land to begin with. A good deal of that land is Antarctica, and the inhabited land below 30° S is essentially the lower triangle of South America, the southern tip of Africa, southern Australia and New Zealand. Below 45° S, the only things worth calling continental land are the end of South America and New Zealand's South Island. It is not that there are no cities. There is no land to put them on.
The southern hemisphere has a 5,000km cover charge
Seoul is at 37.5665° N, 4,177km from the equator by the shortest path. Reaching the southern hemisphere means spending that 4,177km first. Which is why even the closest southern city in the dictionary is that far away.
| City | Country | From Seoul |
|---|---|---|
| Dili | Timor-Leste | 5,131km |
| Labuan Bajo | Indonesia | 5,175km |
| Surabaya | Indonesia | 5,198km |
| Lombok | Indonesia | 5,255km |
| Bali | Indonesia | 5,257km |
The nearest southern city is 5,131km away. Spend that distance heading north instead and half of Europe is already a candidate before you get as far as Dubai (6,783km) or Tromsø (6,772km).
Where in the journey do you cross the equator
Draw the routes and the crossing point differs by destination. We marked where latitude hits zero along each great circle.
| Destination | Longitude at crossing | % into the journey |
|---|---|---|
| Ushuaia | 143.7° E | 25% |
| Auckland | 151.2° E | 51% |
| Sydney | 139.9° E | 53% |
| Cape Town | 67.4° E | 54% |
| Bali | 117.1° E | 82% |
| Rio de Janeiro | 31.6° W | 84% |
| Lima | 85.6° W | 90% |
| Nairobi | 38.5° E | 98% |
The Bali route spends 82% of the journey in the northern hemisphere and crosses at the end. The Nairobi route crosses at the 98% mark, which is essentially on arrival. The Ushuaia route, by contrast, crosses at 25% — in the sea north of New Guinea — and spends the remaining 75% in the South Pacific. And not shallowly, either. The southernmost point of that route is 69.5° S, and 14.6% of the journey is inside the Antarctic Circle. The shortest way from Seoul to the tip of South America grazes the seas off Antarctica.
The twelve farthest
Line the dictionary up by distance from Seoul and the top twelve are all southern hemisphere, all South American. The top six:
| City | Country | From Seoul |
|---|---|---|
| Montevideo | Uruguay | 19,606km |
| Buenos Aires | Argentina | 19,432km |
| Florianópolis | Brazil | 18,830km |
| Puerto Iguazú | Argentina | 18,676km |
| Foz do Iguaçu | Brazil | 18,671km |
| Asunción | Paraguay | 18,581km |
Widen it to the farthest 50 and 33 of them are southern. Given that Seoul's antipode lies over the South Atlantic, that is only to be expected. The dictionary holds just 89 southern cities, and yet in the distance ranking the south is the majority.
Among the 84 featured destinations, 27 are in the southern hemisphere — 32%, well above the dictionary's 17.0%. Hard-to-reach places make more appealing destinations, so the featured list tilts further south than the dictionary does.
What we are not certain about
- All of these numbers are based on our 524 cities. The real southern hemisphere has far more cities than are in the dictionary. The accurate phrasing is not "there are few cities in the southern hemisphere" but "this service has put few southern cities in."
- The land percentage was counted by laying a 0.5-degree grid over the low-resolution map shapes (Natural Earth 1:110m) and correcting the area by latitude. The resolution drops small islands, so the island-heavy South Pacific comes out slightly lower than it should.
- The equator crossings were found by dividing each great circle into 40,000 segments and marking where the sign of the latitude flips.
The bottom half of the map looking slack when you open it is not purely the dictionary being lazy. There really is a great deal of ocean down there. And yet the farthest cities are all crowded into the slack half.