The true size of countries

Look at a world map on a wall.

Greenland, near the top, may look as big as a whole continent. But it is not! Some maps make places near the top and bottom look much bigger than they really are.

Some world maps are drawn on the Mercator projection, which Gerardus Mercator introduced in 1569. It is very useful for navigation, but it has a big side effect: the farther a place is from the Equator, the bigger it looks.

That is why, on a Mercator map, Greenland looks bigger than South America. In real life, Greenland is smaller even than the Arabian Peninsula. In this topic you can compare the true sizes of countries and continents, using real numbers.

Britannica describes the Mercator projection (1569) as a useful navigation tool, because a straight line on it indicates a straight course, but less practical for world maps, because the scale is distorted: areas farther from the Equator appear disproportionately large. Its best-known effect is that Greenland appears larger than South America, although in actual area Greenland is smaller than the Arabian Peninsula.

USGS puts it more strongly: distances and areas on Mercator maps are grossly distorted near the polar regions. Comparing sizes on such a map can mislead. The fix is simple: compare measured areas, or use a map designed to keep areas true. The comparisons here use areas from Britannica, Wikidata and the UN Demographic Yearbook.

Greenland is a very big island.

But Africa is huge! You could fit about 14 Greenlands into Africa. On a globe, you can see how big Africa really is.

Greenland is the world's largest island, covering about 2,166,086 square kilometers. But Africa covers about 30,365,000 square kilometers.

Divide Africa's area by Greenland's and you get about 14. So Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland. Africa also measures about 8,000 kilometers from north to south. On a Mercator map these two look much closer in size than they really are, because Greenland lies so far north, where Mercator stretches places the most.

The numbers are clear. Greenland, the world's largest island according to Britannica, has an area of 2,166,086 km² (Britannica and Wikidata agree). Britannica gives Africa's total land area as about 30,365,000 km² (11,724,000 square miles), measuring about 8,000 km north to south and 7,400 km east to west. The ratio is 30,365,000 ÷ 2,166,086 ≈ 14.0: Africa is about fourteen times larger.

The visual impression on a Mercator world map is very different, because Greenland spans high northern latitudes, where Mercator's enlargement is greatest. USGS notes that Mercator distances are true only along the Equator and reasonably correct within 15° of it.

On a globe, the lines going up and down meet at the poles.

On a Mercator map, these lines never meet. So the land near the poles gets pulled wider. The map pulls it taller too.

On a globe, the lines of longitude come together at the North and South Poles. On a Mercator map, they are drawn as straight, evenly spaced lines that never meet. So places near the poles get stretched sideways.

Mercator also spaced the lines of latitude farther and farther apart toward the poles, so places are stretched up and down as well. On the map, the shapes of small areas still look right, but sizes grow and grow the farther you go from the Equator. The poles themselves cannot be shown at all.

On the globe, meridians converge at the poles; at 60° latitude they are half as far apart as the parallels (USGS). The Mercator projection draws meridians as equally spaced parallel lines, so east-west distances are stretched more and more with latitude. The projection is conformal, keeping angles and the shapes of small areas true (USGS), and its parallels are spaced farther and farther apart as their distance from the Equator increases (Britannica), stretching north-south distances too.

The outcome, in USGS's words, is that areas and shapes of large areas are distorted, distortion increases away from the Equator and is extreme in polar regions, and the poles are not shown. Because a conformal map distorts the sizes of areas even while showing small shapes correctly, high-latitude countries such as Greenland, Canada and Russia look far larger relative to tropical countries than they are.

Brazil is bigger than Greenland. Australia is bigger too.

Even a country in the middle of Africa, called DR Congo, is a little bigger than Greenland!

Here are some real areas, from Wikidata and the United Nations. Greenland: about 2.17 million square kilometers. Democratic Republic of the Congo, near the Equator in Africa: about 2.34 million, a little bigger than Greenland. India: about 3.29 million, about one and a half Greenlands.

Australia: about 7.69 million, about three and a half Greenlands. Brazil: about 8.51 million, almost four Greenlands. Russia is about 17.1 million, almost eight Greenlands. And the United States, China and India together are still smaller than Africa.

Using areas from Wikidata and the UN Demographic Yearbook 2024 (UN figures for Brazil, the United States and Russia) and simple division: Democratic Republic of the Congo 2,344,858 km² (1.08 Greenlands); India 3,287,263 km² (1.52); Australia 7,692,024 km² (3.55); Brazil 8,510,417 km² (3.93); China 9,596,961 km² (4.43); United States 9,833,517 km² (4.54); Canada 9,984,670 km² (4.61); Russia 17,098,246 km² (7.89). Africa (30,365,000 km², Britannica) is about 14.0.

Two patterns stand out. First, countries close to the Equator, such as DR Congo and Brazil, are each larger than Greenland. Second, the combined area of the United States, China and India, about 22.7 million km², is still about 7.6 million km² short of Africa's. Figures for national area vary slightly between sources, so treat the last digits loosely.

To see true sizes, use a globe.

Or use a special flat map that keeps sizes right. Or compare the numbers: how many square kilometers each place covers.

There are three good ways to compare the sizes of places fairly. The first is a globe, which shows all areas truly. The second is an equal-area map, a flat projection designed so that every area is in the right proportion, even though shapes get bent a little.

The third is numbers: an area in square kilometers or square miles. A square kilometer is a square 1 kilometer on each side, and every country's area can be measured in them. Some world maps, like the Robinson projection, are compromises: Greenland and Canada look closer to their true sizes than on Mercator, though not perfectly.

USGS lists the globe as true in direction, distance, shape and area, and defines an equal-area map as one on which all areas are proportional to the same areas on Earth, at the cost of distorted shapes. Examples it describes include the Albers Equal Area Conic, the Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area and the Sinusoidal; on the Sinusoidal, for instance, areas are equal and shapes are increasingly distorted away from the central meridian and near the poles.

Compromise projections take a middle path. USGS says the Robinson projection (1963) gives a better balance of size and shape at high latitudes than Mercator, showing the Soviet Union, Canada and Greenland truer to size, though Greenland is compressed. For precise comparisons, measured areas are best, such as those Britannica, Wikidata and the UN Demographic Yearbook publish.