Greenland vs Australia: the true size
Australia is about 3.5× the size of Greenland — 7.69 million km² to 2.17 million — though the Mercator map draws them nearly the same size.
By W. Viljoen · Published 21 June 2026
Greenlandvs
Australia- Greenland2,142,677 km² · 9.9× on the map
- Australia7,723,177 km² · 1.2× on the map
Both panels are drawn to the same scale. On the left, each country is the size the Mercator map gives it; on the right, its true size with the latitude distortion removed.The illusion
Glance at almost any world map and Greenland looks like a continent in its own
right — easily a match for Australia sprawling across the southern hemisphere.
That impression is almost entirely a trick of the projection.
The numbers
- Greenland: ~2.17 million km²
- Australia: ~7.69 million km²
Australia is roughly 3.5 times the area of Greenland. You could drop three
and a half Greenlands into Australia and still have room to spare.
Why the map lies
The Mercator projection stretches the world horizontally and vertically as
you move away from the equator, and the stretch grows without bound toward the
poles. Greenland sits up around 60–83° north, so it is inflated enormously.
Australia straddles the tropics and the mid-southern latitudes, where the
distortion is mild.
The result: two landmasses of very different real size are rendered at
deceptively similar scale.
Try it
Grab Greenland on the map and drag it down toward Australia. Because the app
preserves its true surface area, you'll watch it shrink dramatically as it
leaves the high latitudes — until its honest size next to Australia is obvious.