The Southern Hemisphere[1] is the half of a planet A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.[a] that is south By Western convention, the bottom side of a map is south; the southern direction has azimuth or bearing of 180° of the equator An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass. The capitalized term Equator refers to the Earth's equator—the word hemisphere A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space, such as the shape of a round ball. Like a circle in two dimensions, a perfect sphere is completely symmetrical around its center, with all points on the surface lying the same distance r from the center point. This distance r is known as the radius of the sphere. The (from the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of word σφαιρα (sphere) +ημι(half)) literally means 'half ball'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an imaginary sphere of arbitrarily large radius, concentric with the Earth and rotating upon the same axis. All objects in the sky can be thought of as projected upon the celestial sphere. Projected upward from Earth's equator and poles are the celestial equator and the celestial poles. The south of the celestial equator An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass. The capitalized term Equator refers to the Earth's equator.
Earth's southern hemisphere contains all or parts of four continents A continent is one of several large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents – they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia (Antarctica Antarctica (pronounced /ænˈtɑrktɪkə/ ) is Earth's southernmost continent, underlying the South Pole. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the southern hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14.0 million km2 (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after, Australia Australia is the smallest of the geographic continents, though not of geological continents. There is no universally accepted definition of the word "continent"; the lay definition is "One of the main continuous bodies of land on the earth's surface." . By that definition, the continent of Australia includes only the Australian, parts of South America South America is the southern continent of America, situated in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean; North America and the Caribbean Sea lie to the northwest and parts of Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people (as of 2009, see table) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.72% of the world's human population), four oceans An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface (~3.61 X 1014 m2) is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas (South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106,400,000 square kilometres , it covers approximately twenty percent of the Earth's surface and about twenty-six percent of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the ", Indian The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian subcontinent; on the west by East Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean . It is the only ocean to be named, South Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east, and Southern The Southern Ocean, also known as the Great Southern Ocean, the Antarctic Ocean and the South Polar Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60°S latitude and encircling Antarctica. It is usually regarded as the fourth-largest of the five principal oceanic divisions. This ocean zone is where cold,) and most of Oceania Oceania is a geographical, and often geopolitical, region consisting of numerous lands—mostly islands in the Pacific Ocean and vicinity. The term "Oceania" was coined in 1831 by French explorer Dumont d'Urville.[dubious – discuss] The term is also sometimes used to denote a continent comprising Australia and proximate Pacific islands,. Several islands off the Asian continental mainland are also in the Southern Hemisphere. Due to the tilt of Earth's rotation relative to the Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It has a diameter of about 1,392,000 kilometers , about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass (about 2 × 1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, while the rest is and the ecliptic plane The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun traces out in the sky during the year, appearing to move westwards on an imaginary spherical surface, the celestial sphere, relative to the fixed stars. In more accurate terms, it is the intersection of the celestial sphere with the ecliptic plane, which is the geometric plane containing the mean, summer is December 21 to March 21 and winter is June 21 to September 22. September 22 is the vernal equinox and March 21 is the autumnal equinox.
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Geography
Climates Climates encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elements in a given region over long periods of time. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these same elements and their variations over periods up to two weeks in the southern hemisphere overall tend to be slightly milder than those in the Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of equator—the word hemisphere literally means 'half sphere'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator. Earth's northern hemisphere contains most of its land area and most of its human population except in the Antarctic Antarctica (pronounced /ænˈtɑrktɪkə/ ) is Earth's southernmost continent, underlying the South Pole. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the southern hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14.0 million km2 (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after which is colder than the Arctic The Arctic is the region around the Earth's North Pole, opposite the Antarctic region around the South Pole. The Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean (which overlies the North Pole) and parts of Canada, Greenland (a territory of Denmark), Russia, the United States (Alaska), Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland. This is because the southern hemisphere has significantly more ocean and less land. Water heats up and cools down more slowly than land. The southern hemisphere is also significantly less polluted than the northern hemisphere because of lower overall population A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define the population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals from other areas. Normally breeding is substantially more densities (a total of 10 to 12% of the human population), lower levels of industrialisation Industrialisation is the process of social and economic change that transforms a human group from a pre-industrial society into an industrial one. It is a part of a wider modernisation process, where social change and economic development are closely related with technological innovation, particularly with the development of large-scale energy and, and smaller land masses Land mass refers to the total area of a country or geographical region . The Earth's total land mass is 148,939,063.133 km² (57,511,026.002 square miles) which is about 29.2% of its total surface. Water covers approximately 70.8% of the Earth's surface, mostly in the form of oceans. (Air currents run mostly west–east so pollution does not easily spread north or south.) In the southern hemisphere the sun passes from east East is a direction in geography. It is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is opposite of west and perpendicular to north and south to west West is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography through the north The word north is related to the Old High German nord, both descending from the Proto-Indo-European unit ner-, meaning "left" . (Presumably a natural primitive description of its concept is "to the left of the rising sun".), although north of the Tropic of Capricorn The Tropic of Capricorn, or Southern tropic, is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It currently lies 23º 26′ 17″ south of the equator the mean sun Solar time is time kept or measured by the sun; and its basic division, the day, has been recognized and used since the dawn of history. The immediately visible sign of the passage of time by the sun, and the basis of its measurement, is the sun's apparent motion along the daily course that it appears to trace out in the sky from east to west can be directly overhead or due south at midday. The sun rotating through the north causes an apparent right-left trajectory through the sky unlike the left-right motion of the sun when seen from the northern hemisphere as it passes through the southern sky. Sun-cast shadows turn anticlockwise A clockwise motion is one that proceeds 'like the clock's hands': from the top to the right, then down and then to the left, and back to the top. In a mathematical sense, a circle defined parametrically in a positive Cartesian plane by the equations x = sin t and y = cos t is traced clockwise as t increases in value. Described another way, through the day and sundials A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a flat surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. As the sun moves across the sky, the shadow-edge progressively aligns with different hour-lines on the plate. Such have the hours increasing in the anticlockwise direction. Hurricanes and tropical storms spin clockwise A clockwise motion is one that proceeds 'like the clock's hands': from the top to the right, then down and then to the left, and back to the top. In a mathematical sense, a circle defined parametrically in a positive Cartesian plane by the equations x = sin t and y = cos t is traced clockwise as t increases in value. Described another way, in the southern hemisphere (as opposed to anticlockwise A clockwise motion is one that proceeds 'like the clock's hands': from the top to the right, then down and then to the left, and back to the top. In a mathematical sense, a circle defined parametrically in a positive Cartesian plane by the equations x = sin t and y = cos t is traced clockwise as t increases in value. Described another way, in the Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of equator—the word hemisphere literally means 'half sphere'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator. Earth's northern hemisphere contains most of its land area and most of its human population) due to the Coriolis effect In physics, the Coriolis effect is an apparent deflection of moving objects when they are viewed from a rotating reference frame. In a reference frame with clockwise rotation, the deflection is to the left of the motion of the object; in one with anti-clockwise rotation, the deflection is to the right. The mathematical expression for the Coriolis.
The southern temperate zone In geography, temperate or tepid latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. The changes in these regions between summer and winter are generally relatively moderate, rather than extreme hot or cold. But in continental areas, such as Asia and central North America the variations between summer and winter can be extreme, a subsection of the southern hemisphere, is nearly all oceanic. The only countries that lie entirely within this zone are Uruguay Uruguay (pronounced /ˈjʊərəɡwaɪ/ , Spanish pronunciation: [uɾuˈɣwai]), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay (sometimes rendered as the Eastern Republic of Uruguay in the English language; Spanish: República Oriental del Uruguay, pronounced [reˈpuβlika oɾjenˈtal del uɾuˈɣwai]), is a country located in the southeastern part, Lesotho Lesotho (pronounced /lɨˈsuːtuː/ , lih-SOO-too), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a landlocked country and enclave—entirely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. It is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) in size with a population of approximately 2,067,000. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. Lesotho is the southernmost, Swaziland The Kingdom of Swaziland , sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique. The nation, as well as its people, are named after the 19th century king Mswati II and New Zealand New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori language name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud. The Realm of New Zealand also. Countries lying partly in the zone are Chile Chile (traditional English pronunciation /ˈtʃɪli/, also pronounced /ˈtʃiːleɪ/ ), officially the Republic of Chile (Spanish: República de Chile [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈtʃile] ( listen)), is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders (most of), Argentina The Argentine claims in Antarctica along with the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the South Sandwich Islands (administered by the United Kingdom) shown in light green (most of), Paraguay Paraguay (pronounced /ˈpɛrəgweɪ/ ), officially the Republic of Paraguay (Spanish: República del Paraguay, pronounced [reˈpuβlika ðel paɾaˈɣwai]; Guaraní: Tetã Paraguái /teˈtã paɾaˈgʷaj/), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and, Brazil Brazil (pronounced /brəˈzɪl/ ; Portuguese: Brasil, IPA: [bɾaˈziw]), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil, listen (help·info)), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population. It is the only Portuguese-speaking, Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990 following the Namibian War of Independence. Its, Botswana The Republic of Botswana is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The citizens are referred to as "Batswana" (singular: Motswana). Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. It has held free and fair democratic elections, South Africa Coordinates: 29°02′46″S 25°03′47″E / 29.046°S 25.063°E The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a 2,798 kilometres coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; while Lesotho is an independent (most of), Mozambique, Madagascar and Australia.
The South Pole is oriented towards the galactic centre and this, combined with clearer skies, makes for excellent viewing of the night sky from the southern hemisphere with brighter and more numerous stars.
Forests in the southern hemisphere have special features which set them aside from the northern hemisphere. Both Chile and New Zealand share, for example, unique beech species or Nothofagus. The eucalyptus is native to Australia but has now gone on to be planted in southern Africa and Latin America for pulp production and, increasingly, biofuel uses.
List of continents and countries
Continents
A famous photo of Earth from Apollo 17 (Blue Marble) originally had the south pole at the top; however, it was turned upside-down to fit the traditional perspective.- Antarctica
- Africa (approximately 1/3 of it - from south of Libreville in Gabon in the west to south of Somalia in the east)
- Australia (99.9% of it is in the southern hemisphere, except for the very northern part of Raja Ampat Islands in New Guinea which is in the northern hemisphere)
- South America (mostly, south of the Amazon River mouth in the east and Quito in the west)
African countries
- Entirely
- Angola
- Botswana
- Burundi
- Comoros
- Lesotho
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mauritius
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Rwanda
- Seychelles
- South Africa
- Swaziland
- Tanzania
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
- Mostly
- Partly
Asian countries
- Entirely
- Mostly
- Partly
Oceania countries
- Entirely
- Mostly
South American countries
- Entirely
- Mostly
- Partly
Other territories
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In Middle Ages
In Middle Ages, the southern hemisphere was believed to be containing of water only (in contrast to the northern, which was covered by land). The mount of Purgatory was located in the middlem of the South Pole (as an antipode to Jerusalem). See also Purgatorio (Dante).
See also
- Northern Hemisphere
- Seasons
- Solstice
- Equinox
- Tropic of Capricorn
- Crux (or Southern Cross)
References
- ^ Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary (based on Collegiate vol., 11th ed.) 2006. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc.
| This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be and removed. (January 2007) |
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Categories: Hemispheres
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Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:27:51 GMT+00:00
AFP "This will be a problem that will continue into ( southern hemisphere ) summer," said Adriaansen. News of the plagues comes after a mass sabotage in ...
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Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:20:11 GM
The sport has grown in popularity in the . Southern Hemisphere. and is held in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Even if you do not intend to participate in such an event, the mirth derived from watching these funny sports will give ...
Q. December,January and February while the cold season in the northern hemisphere are the hot months in the southern hemisphere. Is the hot season in the southern hemisphere called summer or winter?
Asked by Stan W - Sun Dec 10 16:01:40 2006 - - 7 Answers - 0 Comments
A. It depends on the language. In Argentina it's called "el verano". In Brazil, it's called "o verao". When you translate these to English, they all mean *summer*.
Answered by David M - Sun Dec 10 16:07:00 2006
