Most of us can find our hometown on a map, but we don't always think about which other places in the world are located at the same latitude.
A new interactive map allows users to discover cities that lie on the same parallel as their place of residence, highlighting some rather unexpected matches.
According to the map, Edinburgh and Moscow are both located at the 56°N parallel, while Vancouver and Paris lie around the same latitude, 49.3°N.
New York and Madrid are both located at 40.9°N, along with cities such as Naples, Istanbul, and Beijing. In the southern hemisphere, Buenos Aires and Perth are on the same parallel, around 32.2°S.
The map's creator, Platform X user @vicnaum, said he had built a very simple page where people can check which cities are on the same parallel, as well as the mirrored parallel in the other hemisphere.
According to him, places at the same latitude can expect similar hours of daylight, longer or shorter nights depending on the season, and similar strengths of sunlight.
Users who tried the map reacted with astonishment on social media. One wrote that it gets "the same amount of sunlight as Antarctica," while another expressed surprise when he realized, at the age of 45, that Marseille and Toronto are practically on the same parallel.
Another user said he didn't know Orlando and Delhi were on the same latitude. While someone else humorously commented that when you wake up from the cold in Chicago, you have to remember that the city is on the same latitude as Madrid.
Other examples include London and the Canadian city of Saskatoon, both located at 52.1°N. Andorra, in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, is at the same latitude as Chicago. While the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro is parallel to the remote Australian city of Alice Springs.
However, cities located on the same parallel do not necessarily have the same climate. They generally experience the same length of day on a given date, but not the same sunrise and sunset times. These depend on the east-west position and local time zones.
Also, atmospheric conditions affect the actual amount of sunlight a place receives. Two cities may be at the same latitude, but one may have a mild oceanic climate, while the other has much harsher winters or hotter summers.
In general, the further away a country is from the equator, the greater the seasonal changes in the length of day and night.
The map has also brought attention back to the way we see the world on traditional maps. Experts have previously pointed out that the Mercator projection, one of the most widely used maps in schools and publications, distorts the true size of continents.
In this projection, North America and Russia appear larger than Africa, while in reality Africa is about three times larger than North America and significantly larger than Russia.
Last year, several African countries called for the world map to be revised to more accurately reflect the true size of the continent. The African Union has backed a campaign to replace the use of the Mercator projection with maps that more accurately show the size of Africa.
According to representatives of this campaign, the distortion of the map is not simply a visual issue. They argue that it affects the way Africa's geopolitical, economic and cultural importance is perceived in the world. /GazetaExpress/
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