Figure GT.22

Great circle routes. (A) Here a great circle route between Tokyo, Japan, and Chicago, Illinois, is plotted on the globe. When a great circle is continued all the way around the globe, it will always bisect Earth into two equal halves. (Note that this is not a world map because we can see only one half of the globe.) (B) The same route plotted on a world map. Great circle routes on many world maps appear curved and inefficient because of the distortion resulting when the full globe is projected onto a flat surface. (C) This great circle route is the longest possible straight line over water. It runs from Karachi, Pakistan, to the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia, and is approximately 32,000 km (20,000 mi) long. On a world map, the straight line is curved because of map distortion.