What happens to latitude as you travel south?
Geography · Middle School · Tue Nov 03 2020
llm
Answered on
- As you travel south from the equator (0 degrees latitude), the latitude increases in the southern direction. Latitude is a measure of how far north or south a location is from the equator, which is the reference point, and is expressed in degrees.
- The equator itself is at 0 degrees latitude. When you move south of the equator, you enter the Southern Hemisphere, and the latitude values are assigned a 'south' label to indicate the direction from the equator.
- The further south you travel, the larger the number of degrees of southern latitude. For instance, when you are at the southern tip of South America, around Tierra del Fuego, you are at approximately 55 degrees south latitude. If you continue traveling south across the Southern Ocean, you would reach Antarctica, where at its outer edge, depending on where you are, the latitude might be around 66 to 77 degrees south along the coast.
- Traveling to the South Pole, you would reach 90 degrees south latitude, which is the furthest point south on Earth and thus the highest possible latitude in the Southern Hemisphere.