Geography randomness

[redbird]

In the course of collecting maps for someone at work, I discovered that apparently the consensus on the border between Asia and Australia/Oceania is not entirely underwater: it runs down the middle of New Guinea.

From an article in Air and Space, I learned that airport directions are explicitly aligned to magnetic north rather than the Earth's rotational axis. Runways are numbered by their compass orientation (rounded to the nearest ten degrees, and with the final zero dropped, so one pointing due east is 9, not 90). As the magnetic north pole wanders around Ellesmere Island, runways are periodically renumbered. This simultaneously makes sense--airplanes have carried magnetic compasses for a long time--and feels deeply weird. I want "due north" to be constant. [Yes, there's some vague thought that there might have been episodes of "true polar wander" in the very deep geologic past, but most of what was thought to be polar wander turned out to have been misinterpreted plate tectonics.]

Comments

[feorag.livejournal.com]

They renumbered the runways at Edinburgh a few years back because a variation in magnetic north made them closer to 06/24 than 07/25.

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

That's why we have to buy new navigation charts every year. When navigating the traditional way with pen, protractor and special ruler (calibrated in nautical miles), you draw your track, use the protractor to get the true heading, adjust for wind, then convert to magnetic using the isogonal lines which indicate the difference between Magnetic and True North in that area.

[fuzzygabby.livejournal.com]

I've been wondering for a while which continent Greenland is considered to be part of. For whatever reason, I've always thought of it as European, but looking at a map it's much closer to North America.

[redbird]

Greenland is generally considered to be part of North America--it's on this continental shelf, and the Greenlanders have cultural connections to the people of the North American Arctic, despite periodic Nordic settlement. It's an autonomous region of Denmark, but that's not geography, or we'd have to count St. Pierre and Miquelon--and a piece of South America--as part of Europe because they're French overseas departments.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Indonesia is considered Asian and not Oceanic? I wouldn't.