GeoNames Forum

The Geonames dump file includes a column for latitude measured in degrees, but which column (if any) indicates whether this is north/south of the Equator? I'm probably missing something really obvious here!

Hi Brian

Positive values are north of the equator and negative values are south. The same with the longitude. Positive longitudes are east of the Greenwich Meridian and negative values are west.

Cheers

Marc

Now that sounds totally logical. Makes me think I should have checked some data from the Southern Hemisphere before asking my dumb question!

Bearing in mind the data is stored as positive/negative values, would anyone have an opinion on whether this can be presented to users "as is", or should always be expressed as north/south and east/west? I'm only familiar with the latter, but then again I'm no geographer.

We at geonames are mainly using the display format with N/S/E/W, minutes and seconds :

N 48° 12' 0'' E 16° 22' 0''
in the balloon we display the coordinates also in decimal format :

48.2 / 16.36667