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Uncategorized Thursday, August 12th 2010 at 12:55 pm

The World’s Population Mapped by Latitude and Longitude

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Radical cartographer and Harvard grad student Bill Rankin devised these fascinating maps, which show the sum of all population living at each degree of latitude or longitude circa 2000. As you can see above, there’s quite a northerly bias: According to Rankin, roughly 88 percent of the world’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere, with about half north of 27 degrees north.

Rankin: “Taking the northern and southern hemispheres together, on average the world’s population lives 24 degrees from the equator.”

(Bill Rankin via Paul Kedrosky via @felixsalmon)

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  • Seeds01

    the beauty of this graph shows how vunerable the northern hemisphere population north of tropic of cancer are to a cooling of the planet!!!!!! – if it warms these guys are laughing as more growth in agriculture should allow growth in population.

    i am betting that such a graph when  compared to climate variations over the years would see a distinct relationship of peoples moving up and back from the equatorial zones.

    Climate warming is NOT our threat it is the cooling which will come at some stage.
     

  • stfu

    That might be true, but it is a moot point.  There is no evidence to suggest that our planet will go through a cooling phase unless we do something.

  • Bobobobo090

    Divide the results by percentage of land/water at that line, then we’ll have some results!

  • Michael

    This beautiful graph says nothing about agriculture or climate. Food is not grown in centers of population density.
    Many people would move from one area to another due to economics and food supply – if they were allowed to. But the global system of apartheid, enforced by passport, visa and work permit rules, prevents people´s free movement.
    Climate disruption is a major threat to agriculture everywhere and it is known to be coming.

  • Salvuccigianluigi

    what about using in planning? why don’t use at another scale to understand regions?

  • Anonymous

    REALLY? No evidence to suggest that our planet will go through a cooling phase unless we do something? I guess you missed the part where we are in an INTERGLACIAL — that ice ages are the RULE, not the exception for Earth over the past 30My, and that we are overdue to enter into a new period of glaciation. That’s if we do NOTHING.

  • Anonymous

    Shows what most of us Antipodeans already knew: that there are eff all of us in the world (most of the spike in the Southern Hemisphere is from Africa and to a lesser extent South America)

  • Keith

    That was my immediate reaction.

  • Anonymous

    High resolution links would have been nice…

  • http://powernuuz.com CitizenX

    Did we even see the same graph? It truly looks like most of the population is above the equator centered in the northern Mediterranean and China. The cradle of civilation and all that.

    What is traditionally known as Africa doesn’t really make all that much of a statement as to population.

  • Anonymous

    Hmm, should have said Australasian to avoid confusion. ‘Antipodean’ is used in the Commonwealth to describe those in Australasia as it is the antipodes of the Mother Land (the UK).

  • Anonymous

    test

  • Anonymous

    test 2