Can you see half the Earth and almost no land?
Turn a globe so New Zealand faces you. The half of the planet you’re looking at is about 89% ocean.
The water hemisphere
A globe centered at 47°S, 178°E, near New Zealand’s Bounty and Antipodes Islands
Half of Earth is almost all ocean. Center a globe just southeast of New Zealand and 89% of what you see is water. Nearly half of the land that’s left is Antarctica’s ice, and most of the rest is Australia. Earth is 29% land overall, but that land is bunched onto one side: the opposite half, centered on western France, is 47% land.
An overall average can hide a lopsided spread. “29% land” describes neither half of the planet. Before trusting an average, ask how evenly the thing it measures is actually spread out.
What average have you assumed applies everywhere, when it’s really lopsided?
Where is the most land? The opposite half, centered on France
The land hemisphere is 47% land, the most any half of Earth can hold. Its center sits near Nantes, in western France, exactly opposite the water hemisphere. It holds about 80% of the world’s land: all of Europe, Africa, and North America, nearly all of Asia, and most of South America. Even so, more than half of it is still water.
The land hemisphere
A globe centered at 47°N, 2°W, near Nantes, France
What land is in the water half?
Not much, and most of it is at the edges of the view:
| Land | Share of the land in the water hemisphere |
|---|---|
| Antarctica | About 44% |
| Australia | About 28% |
| Southern South America (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) | About 13% |
| Southeast Asia and Taiwan (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and neighbors) | About 11% |
| New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and the Pacific islands | About 3% |
Only about 8% of the world’s people live in this half, most of them in Indonesia and the Philippines.
Why New Zealand?
The watery half is centered on New Zealand territory. Its center, at about 47°13′S, 178°28′E, falls in the ocean near the Bounty and Antipodes Islands, two of New Zealand’s subantarctic island groups. Center the globe on Wellington instead and the view is still about 89% ocean, so New Zealand works as the landmark.
Different calculations put the exact centers a little differently, depending on the map data and whether ice counts as land, but every version lands near New Zealand and western France.
Related exhibits
Sources: Land and ocean shares calculated by Hanten from Natural Earth 1:10m country boundaries (Antarctica’s ice sheet counted as land) using an equal-area projection: water hemisphere 10.8% land, land hemisphere 46.7% land, Earth 28.8% land. Hemisphere centers from S. W. Boggs’s 1945 calculation, as summarized in Wikipedia, “Land and water hemispheres.” Population shares are a rough Hanten estimate from Natural Earth country population figures, split by how much of each country lies in each hemisphere.