Land and water hemispheres

The Earth can be divided into two non-overlapping hemispheres that maximize the total area of either land or ocean. The land hemisphere is centered on Metropolitan France, while the water hemisphere has its center southeast of New Zealand. Although the land hemisphere contains 80 percent of the planet's land, water still covers 53 percent of its surface, making it only 47 percent land. In contrast, the water hemisphere is 89 percent ocean.

Center

The precise center of the land hemisphere has been calculated at different times. A 2002 determination placed it in a central area spanning two focal points around Brittany and the Mediterranean Sea between the Balearic Islands and Catalonia.

An earlier calculation from 1945 put the center at 47°13′N 1°32′W, within the city of Nantes, France. The water hemisphere's center is the antipode of this point, located at 47°13′S 178°28′E, near New Zealand's Bounty Islands in the Pacific Ocean. A 1913 alternative assignment set the land hemisphere's center at 47°24′42″N 2°37′15″W, on Île Dumet near Piriac-sur-Mer, France, with its antipode at 47°24′42″S 177°22′45″E, also near the Bounty Islands.

Distribution of geographical features

The land hemisphere holds nearly all of Asia (except Maritime Southeast Asia), most of South America, and all of Africa, Europe, and North America. Despite this, water still slightly outweighs land within it. This hemisphere also contains most of Earth's inland waters, such as the African Great Lakes, the Caspian Sea, the North American Great Lakes, and Lake Baikal. It is almost identical to the hemisphere with the greatest human population.

The water hemisphere contains only about one-fifth of the world's land. This includes Easter Island, the Hawaiian Islands, other Pacific islands, Maritime Southeast Asia, the southern tip of the Indochinese Peninsula, the southern portion of the Malay Peninsula, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, and the Southern Cone of the Americas. Antarctica, Australia, and Zealandia lie entirely within this hemisphere. Antarctica supplies the water hemisphere with most of the planet's ice.

Most of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, along with the entire Southern Ocean, are also in this hemisphere. By area, the water hemisphere is approximately 89 percent ocean (nearly all part of the World Ocean), 6 percent dry land, and 5 percent polar ice cap. Alphonse Berget's estimates of land area per continent in each hemisphere are shown in the table below.