What the numbers mean
Africa has roughly fourteen times Greenland's area.
Greenland covers about 2.17 million square kilometres; Africa, including adjacent islands, covers about 30.37 million. The difference is easy to miss on a Mercator world map, which enlarges places closer to the poles.
Read the sourcesAn island can be huge and still look too big
Statistics Greenland gives an area of 2,166,086 square kilometres, including the ice-covered interior. It stretches roughly 2,670 kilometres north to south. Greenland is enormous in its own right, but length and area measure different things. A long outline can catch the eye while enclosing much less land than a broader one. [1]
Flattening a globe means making choices
USGS explains that Mercator preserves local angles and draws a route with a constant compass direction as a straight line. Those are useful properties for navigation. Its cost is increasingly distorted area toward the poles. Equal-area maps preserve relative areas, while making different compromises in shape and direction. [3]
Read the map's purpose before its shapes
A route map and a map comparing forest area have different jobs. USGS uses several projections because each suits a different task. When a picture makes one place look larger than another, check its projection before comparing sizes. For this edition, the numbers describe area; the outlines are simplified illustrations. [3]