iSelect up to 5 countries to compare their true size
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Every figure on this page is computed from the boundary data below — none of it is typed in by hand.
How the numbers are worked out.
True area is the spherical area of each country times the Earth's surface area.
The distortion figure is the share of the Mercator map a country occupies divided by
its real share of the world's land — above 1 means the map gives it more room than it
deserves. Antarctica has no figure: Mercator stretches the poles to infinity and cannot
draw it at all.
Boundaries follow de-facto control, so areas for disputed territories may differ from
official national figures.
Which countries. Areas are measured from Natural Earth's detailed 1:50m
outlines, but the map draws the 1:110m set, so the count, the ranking and the map
all describe the same 176 countries. Microstates are not present at that resolution.
The globe. Orthographic is not an equal-area projection, so sliding a country
across a sphere would misstate its size. Dragging spins the globe instead; the
size comparison stays on the flat, equal-area map where it is honest.
Atlas view. The green-to-sand colouring is stylised, not measured land cover.
Both projections run monotonically in latitude down the page, so a single vertical
gradient across the map is a latitude gradient — which is broadly how climate bands
fall. It is drawn from the geometry, but it is not elevation or vegetation data.