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by foobarbazqux 4710 days ago
This is a naive question, but why is the southern hemisphere so much warmer?
3 comments

Antarctica is missing, and the equator is not in the middle of the map (more like 2/3 down). Might this be the reason for your impression?
Yes, it appears symmetric around the equator. Thanks!
It isn't, though. You are probably looking at the equator and may be thinking this way because southern hemisphere has much less land than the northern hemisphere, and almost all of this land has tropical weather. But most of the land is also clustered near the equator: Australia, Brazil, South Africa etc. are warm, but so are Egypt, India and Mexico. This image [1] may help.

[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/World_map...

The southern hemisphere is actually much colder due to the presence of a continental ice cap. The ice pack extends surprisingly far north in winter.