The Ocean 3 



Earth into a land and a water hemisphere, one containing the largest possible land area 

 and the other containing the largest possible water area. The pole of the land hemi- 

 sphere lies at 47-25° N., 2-5° W. near the mouth of the Loire, and this hemisphere 

 contains 52-17°o sea and 47-3% land, corresponding to a ratio of 1 : 0-90; the water 

 area is still shghtly greater than that of the land. The centre of the water hemisphere 

 lies at 47-25° S., 177-5° E., south-east of New Zealand, and this hemisphere contains 

 90-5° water and 9-5% land corresponding to a ratio of 1 : 0-11; shghtly less than 

 10° o is land. For many phenomena affecting the Earth as a whole this division into 

 land and marine sides is of some importance. 



The distribution of land and water areas given in percentage is very irregular and 

 apparently completely asymmetric. Table 1 gives the percentages of land and sea in 

 zones of 5° of latitude. 



Table 1. Distribution of sea and land for zones of 5° of latitude 

 (In per cent, according to E. Kossin-na, 1921) 



90° N.-90° S 



r total ocean 



361-059 X 10'' km2, 70-80' 



\ total continents 148-892 x 10^ km^, 29-20% 



The thin dotted lines in Fig. 2 for 50% and 25% land show that land predominates 

 only in two places, between 70° and 45° N. across the Eurasian and North American 

 continents and at about 70° S. in the region of the Antarctic continent. In the Southern 

 Hemisphere, with the exception of the polar area, the land is nowhere more than 25% 

 of the total area. Between 55° and 65° S. the ocean forms a continuous belt around 

 the Earth, a fact which is of fundamental importance for many oceanographic phe- 

 nomena. 



