Is Greenland Really as Big as Africa? True Size Comparison

No. Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland. Africa covers about 30.4 million km² and Greenland about 2.17 million km². On a standard Mercator world map Greenland looks about as big as Africa, but that is a distortion that grows toward the poles.

Greenland moved next to Africa on the satellite map: at true size it is a small fraction of the continent.

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The numbers

Region	Area	Compared with Greenland
Greenland	about 2.17 million km²	1×
Africa	about 30.4 million km²	about 14×
Mexico	about 1.96 million km²	slightly smaller
Saudi Arabia	about 2.15 million km²	almost the same

Greenland is the largest island in the world, yet it is roughly the size of Saudi Arabia. Africa's area equals about 14 Greenlands. Areas are official or well-known published figures; TrueSize keeps each region's true area while you move it.

Why normal maps get this wrong

The Mercator projection was designed for navigation, not for comparing areas. It keeps angles correct by stretching the map more and more as you go away from the equator. At the latitude of Greenland, which spans about 60°N to 83°N, the stretch is large: areas look 4 to 80 times bigger than they really are. Africa sits across the equator, where the stretch is close to zero.

So the two shapes end up looking alike, even though one is about 14 times larger. The distortion is not random. It follows latitude, which is why moving a country north or south on a Mercator map seems to make it grow or shrink.

What TrueSize does differently

When you drag a region in TrueSize, the shape is recalculated on the sphere so its real area stays the same at every latitude. Greenland looks smaller as you drag it south, and that is correct: you are seeing its real footprint. If you want to see the distortion yourself, turn true size off with Fun → Size, and Greenland swells again as it approaches the pole.

Try it yourself

1. Open the map and type "Greenland" in the search box ("Search for a country or region…"), then add it.
2. For the look of the picture above, open Style and choose Satellite in Map type.
3. Drag Greenland from the far north down next to Africa and watch it shrink to its real size.

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More comparisons

• How big is Africa really?
• Largest subnational regions
• The EU vs the USA
• Tutorial: moving and comparing regions

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