Latitude and longitude | Definition,

Examples, Diagrams, & Facts

explore lines of latitude and longitude

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Latitude is a measurement on a globe or map

(https://www.britannica.com/science/map) of location north or south
of the Equator (https://www.britannica.com/place/Equator).
Technically, there are different kinds of latitude—geocentric,
astronomical, and geographic (or geodetic)—but there are only minor
differences between them. In most common references, geocentric
latitude is implied. Given in degrees, minutes, and seconds, geocentric
latitude is the arc subtended by an angle at Earth’s centre and
measured in a north-south plane poleward from the Equator. Thus, a
point at 30°15′20″ N subtends an angle of 30°15′20″at the centre of the
globe; similarly, the arc between the Equator and either geographic
pole is 90° (one-fourth the circumference of Earth, or 1/4 × 360°), and
thus the greatest possible latitudes are 90° N and 90° S. As aids to
indicate different latitudinal positions on maps or globes, equidistant
circles are plotted and drawn parallel to the Equator and each other;
they are known as parallels
(https://www.britannica.com/science/parallel), or parallels of latitude.
In contrast, geographic latitude, which is the kind used in mapping, is
calculated using a slightly different process. Because Earth is not a
perfect sphere—the planet’s curvature is flatter at the poles—
geographic latitude is the arc subtended by the equatorial plane and
the normal line that can be drawn at a given point on Earth’s surface.
(The normal line is perpendicular to a tangent
(https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/tangent) line touching Earth’s
curvature at that point on the surface.) Different methods are used to
determine geographic latitude, as by taking angle-sights on certain
polar stars or by measuring with a sextant the angle of the noon Sun
above the horizon. The length of a degree of arc of latitude is
approximately 111 km (69 miles), varying, because of the
nonuniformity of Earth’s curvature, from 110.567 km (68.706 miles) at
the Equator to 111.699 km (69.41 miles) at the poles. Geographic
latitude is also given in degrees, minutes, and seconds.

facts about lines of longitude (https://cdn.britannica.com/06/64906-050-675D6688/meridians-

Facts-Lines-of-Longitude-angles-halves.jpg)

Longitude is a measurement of location east or west of the prime

meridian (https://www.britannica.com/science/meridian-geography) at
Greenwich (https://www.britannica.com/place/Greenwich-meridian),
the specially designated
(https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/designated) imaginary north-
south line that passes through both geographic poles and Greenwich
(https://www.britannica.com/place/Greenwich-borough-London),
London. Measured also in degrees, minutes, and seconds, longitude is
the amount of arc created by drawing first a line from Earth’s centre to
the intersection of the Equator and the prime meridian and then
another line from Earth’s centre to any point elsewhere on the Equator.
Longitude is measured 180° both east and west of the prime meridian.
As aids to locate longitudinal positions on a globe or map, meridians
are plotted and drawn from pole to pole where they meet. The distance
per degree of longitude at the Equator is about 111.32 km (69.18
miles) and at the poles, 0.

latitude and longitude of Washington, D.C. (https://cdn.britannica.com/03/64903-050-

3E1ED75A/globe-perspective-north-line-crossing-Washington-DC.jpg)

The combination of meridians

(https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/meridians) of longitude and
parallels of latitude establishes a framework or grid by means of which
exact positions can be determined in reference to the prime meridian
and the Equator: a point described as 40° N, 30° W, for example, is
located 40° of arc north of the Equator and 30° of arc west of the
Greenwich meridian.

Written by Sanat Pai Raikar

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Jun 16, 2023 • Article History
(https://www.britannica.com/science/world-map/additional-info#history)
world map, graphical representation, using projection
(https://www.britannica.com/science/projection-cartography), that
depicts Earth (https://www.britannica.com/place/Earth)’s exterior on a
flat surface. World maps usually show political features, such as
country borders, and physical features. World maps can also be used
to present data (https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/data) on
average temperature, soil type, rainfall distribution, and much else.

world map
Because Earth is an ellipsoid
(https://www.britannica.com/science/ellipsoid), a world map, which
presents Earth in two dimensions, is necessarily a distorted
representation. (A globe (https://www.britannica.com/science/globe-
cartography), which is a model of Earth, eliminates distortion by
presenting a map (https://www.britannica.com/science/map) of the
world on the surface of a sphere.) World maps have evolved over time
to manage these distortions through a variety of transformations,
known as projections, which became more important as world maps
gradually included everything on Earth. Early world maps did not
include the entirety of Earth’s surface as we know it today, as no single
polity or culture (https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/culture) had explored all regions. This limited
knowledge meant that one all-encompassing world map was not
possible until relatively recently.

The early history of world maps

The first known map of the “world,” now located at the British Museum
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/British-Museum), is a cuneiform
clay tablet (https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1882-
0714-509) from Mesopotamia
(https://www.britannica.com/place/Mesopotamia-historical-region-
Asia), dated to about the 6th century bce and known as the Babylonian
Map of the World. This map has two concentric circles, with the outer
circle labeled “Bitter River” and the inner circle containing a
representation of the city of Babylon
(https://www.britannica.com/place/Babylon-ancient-city-
Mesopotamia-Asia) bisected by the Euphrates River
(https://www.britannica.com/place/Euphrates-River). This tablet is
considered the first documented attempt by humans to graphically
define the space in which they were living. By equating Babylon with
the world, the map also served as a symbol of Babylonian power.

World maps through the ages have followed the pattern first laid by
this Babylonian tablet: They have represented the mapmaker’s
worldview (https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/worldview), which
necessarily expresses the cultural and political biases that are
embedded in those views. As mapmakers’ perception and
understanding of the world have changed, so have world maps. Until
technical innovations—including those from the age of exploration up
to modern-day satellite photography—enabled the accurate recording
and measurement of Earth’s surface, large areas could be perceived
only by standing atop towers, hilltops, or other human-made or natural
heights, allowing a person a bird’s-eye view. Early maps were thus
diagrams pieced together by the people who made these observations.
Those who constructed early world maps also had access to the tools
of astronomy (https://www.britannica.com/science/astronomy), which
they used to observe the movements of the Sun and the stars and thus
estimate Earth’s size and shape. All of these methods often led to
errors in depicting Earth, however, which meant that the makers of
world maps faced numerous challenges.

Four challenges

The first challenge that early mapmakers faced was completeness: Did
their world map provide a view of all known lands and oceans? This
issue slowly resolved itself as exploration helped fill in the gaps.
Unknown sections of the world were replaced in maps with images,
often of monsters. These sections, sometimes referred to as terra
incognita, were filled in over time. A map of the Roman Empire
(https://www.britannica.com/place/Roman-Empire) known as the
Tabula Peutingeriana (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tabula-
Peutingeriana) is a narrow but very long scroll—clearly an unrealistic
and incomplete representation of the world, but it was successful in
showcasing the reach
(https://digital.onb.ac.at/RepViewer/viewer.faces?doc=DTL_2764184)
of the Roman Empire.

Ptolemy's world map (https://cdn.britannica.com/16/2316-050-3E41AB58/map-Ptolemy-world-Ulm-Ger.jpg)

Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map (https://cdn.britannica.com/11/134211-050-

143125E9/World-map-Martin-Waldseemuller-1507.jpg)

The first realistic world map is credited

(https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/credited) to Ptolemy
(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ptolemy), who created it in the
2nd century ce. Ptolemy collected documents detailing locations of
towns, added information gathered from travelers, and came up with a
system of latitude and longitude
(https://www.britannica.com/science/latitude) to plot thousands of
places from Britain to Asia to North Africa
(https://www.britannica.com/place/North-Africa). A believer in the
spherical Earth (https://www.britannica.com/science/spherical-Earth),
Ptolemy also successfully tackled the problems posed by projection
(https://www.britannica.com/science/projection-cartography). Many
subsequent world maps were less accurate. A map dating to 1050 at
the Saint-Sever monastery in France places the Garden of Eden
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/Garden-of-Eden) at its top (which,
according to the map’s logic, puts it closest to the heavens).
Mapmaking accelerated in Europe during the Renaissance
(https://www.britannica.com/event/Renaissance), driven by
exploration (https://www.britannica.com/topic/European-exploration),
which, in turn, grew commerce
(https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/commerce) and built empires
—two activities that accurate mapping greatly benefited. The first map
showing North and South America clearly separated from Asia was
produced in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller
(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Waldseemuller)
(though his rendering of the American continents is barely
recognizable to us today).

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A second mapmaking
(https://www.britannica.com/science/cartography) challenge was the
problem of scale (https://www.britannica.com/science/map/Map-
scales-and-classifications#ref51778): As the scale of a map increases
—as more and more of the world becomes known and is depicted on a
single map—the map’s level of detail, and thus accuracy, decreases.
Early mapmakers did not always care much for cartographic accuracy
as we understand it today; for those who did, they often lacked the
instruments or technology
(https://www.britannica.com/technology/technology) necessary to be
accurate. Christopher Columbus
(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus)’s first
journey across the Atlantic in the 15th century was influenced by a
Ptolemaic map, which showed the world as 30 percent smaller than it
is and thus misled him into believing he had arrived in India
(https://www.britannica.com/place/India) when he landed on
Hispaniola. As European countries started establishing colonies
across newly claimed lands, each of them mapped these regions. They
also began to undertake the systematic topographic mapping
(https://www.britannica.com/science/topographic-map) of these
territories, though they did so using their own standard measures of
scale as well as distance. Great Britain used a 1:2,500 scale in 1858,
while in the 19th century unified Germany was mapped at 1:100,000. It
was only in 1891 that the International Geographical Congress
proposed that participating countries collaborate
(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collaborate) in the
production of a 1:1,000,000-scale world map, which in turn led to
increasing standardization of cartographic specifications and formats.

map from Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum orbis terrarum (https://cdn.britannica.com/13/134213-050-

3D0141F3/World-map-Theatrum-orbis-terrarum-Abraham-Ortelius-1570.jpg)

A third challenge confronted in early world maps was that of

perspective: From what viewpoint does the mapmaker make the map?
Early maps are—as Jerry Brotton, in A History of the World in 12 Maps
(2012), has called them—“egocentric.” The focus is on the mapmaker
and their immediate environs, which are typically placed, as in the
Babylonian tablet, at the map’s centre. During the Renaissance
(https://www.britannica.com/event/Renaissance), some cartographers
compared those who used a map to theatregoers, as seen in the atlas
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/atlas-maps) Theatrum orbis
terrarum (“Theatre of the World”), published in 1570 by Abraham
Ortelius (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham-Ortelius).
Today, the technology that most often provides data for maps—and the
maps themselves—also sets expectations for a map’s perspective. We
see the world from the perspective of a satellite
(https://www.britannica.com/technology/Earth-satellite) orbiting Earth,
in which we can zoom in to provide a high level of detail and zoom out
to provide a much wider view. Sometimes, though, cultural convention
determines perspective. Modern-day world maps show north as the
“up” direction, even though there is nothing intrinsic
(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic) to any of the
four cardinal directions that warrants picking one direction rather the
others.
 distortion caused by the Mercator projection (https://cdn.britannica.com/47/2547-050-
2A235895/Globe-Earth-land-distortion-projection-Mercator-latitudes.jpg)

A fourth challenge was projection

(https://www.britannica.com/science/projection-cartography): How
can the three-dimensional surface of Earth be shown in two
dimensions? Many shapes have been used over the years to describe
Earth, though several early maps benefited from their makers’ belief in
Earth being flat (https://www.britannica.com/topic/flat-Earth). The
mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss
(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carl-Friedrich-Gauss), in the
1820s, proved that a curved sphere and a plane are not isometric,
which means that Earth’s surface cannot be shown in two dimensions
at a fixed scale without some form of distortion. As a result, multiple
projections exist, among them orthographic projection
(https://www.britannica.com/technology/orthographic-projection-
engineering), gnomonic projection
(https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/projection), azimuthal
equidistant projection, Goode homolosine projection, and many more—
and all of them acknowledge the fact that, to some extent, they
misrepresent the world. The Mercator projection
(https://www.britannica.com/science/Mercator-projection), the most
commonly used map projection, shows the world map as a rectangular
grid, which causes regions at higher latitudes to appear much larger
than they really are.

Contemporary world maps

Most contemporary world maps have been designed using aerial

photography (https://www.britannica.com/technology/aerial-
photography) and high-definition lenses, allowing the depiction of land
and ocean (https://www.britannica.com/science/ocean) boundaries
with a high level of accuracy. Topographical detail can also been
captured accurately, save in regions of extreme weather, such as
portions of Antarctica (https://www.britannica.com/place/Antarctica).
However, borders between and within countries are defined politically.
World maps thus vary in their depictions of national borders,
depending on the country of publication and its prevailing
(https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/prevailing) political situations.
Like the earliest world maps, today’s maps continue to showcase
cultural and political biases.
In his work in astronomy
(https://www.britannica.com/science/astronomy), Jeffreys
established that the four large outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
and Neptune) are very cold and devised early models of their planetary
structure. His other astronomical work includes research into the
origin of the solar system (https://www.britannica.com/science/solar-
system) and the theory of the variation of latitude
(https://www.britannica.com/science/latitude).

In geophysics (https://www.britannica.com/science/geophysics), he
investigated the thermal history of the Earth, was coauthor (1940) of
the standard tables of travel times for earthquake waves, and was the
first to demonstrate that the Earth’s core
(https://www.britannica.com/science/Earths-core) is liquid. He
explained the origin of monsoons
(https://www.britannica.com/science/monsoon) and sea breezes and
showed how cyclones (https://www.britannica.com/science/cyclone-
meteorology) are vital to the general circulation of the atmosphere
(https://www.britannica.com/science/atmosphere). Jeffreys also
published seminal (https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/seminal) works on probability theory
(https://www.britannica.com/science/probability-theory) and on
methods of general mathematical physics
(https://www.britannica.com/science/mathematical-physics).

Jeffreys was an effective critic of the mechanical feasibility of the

theory of continental drift
(https://www.britannica.com/science/continental-drift-geology), a
forerunner of modern plate tectonics. His skepticism
(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skepticism) of the
possibility of convection in the Earth’s mantle carried over to strong
objections to plate tectonics
(https://www.britannica.com/science/plate-tectonics) as well—an
opposition he maintained all his life in spite of mounting geophysical
evidence that the theory was correct.

Jeffreys’s honours included the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical

Society (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Royal-Astronomical-
Society) (1937) and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/Royal-Society) of London (1948).
Among his principal works, many of which went through multiple
editions in his lifetime, are The Earth: Its Origin, History and Physical
Constitution (1924), Theory of Probability (1939), Earthquakes and
Mountains (1935), and Methods of Mathematical Physics (1946),
written with his wife, Lady Bertha Swirles Jeffreys. The Collected
Papers of Sir Harold Jeffreys was published in six volumes from 1971
to 1977.
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