What if the Earth rotated 90 degrees?

What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now, but rotated by 90 degrees?

Credits
*******
Randall Munroe | Narrator
Henry Reich | Writer & Director
Lizah van der Aart | Illustration and Video Editing
Ever Salazar | Chief Chaos Controller
Know Art Studios | Music & Sound Effects

What If? The Video Series is the official adaptation of the What If? books by Randall Munroe and is produced by Neptune Studios LLC.

Henry Reich is the creator of MinutePhysics and executive producer of MinuteEarth and MinuteFood and founder of Neptune Studios LLC (the parent company for all three youtube channels).

©2025 xkcd, inc.

[GreatSirZachary]

I have never so strongly felt and deeply understood how much map projections distort land until I saw the map of the land rotated 90 degrees and took a while to recognize what was what.

[Commander_Appo]

90° is crazy, but I’ve heard it rotates ~360° in a day

[systemverilog]

Honestly, the idea of an icy Andes mountain range acting as a nigh impenetrable winter wall to the south pole is, like really cool to me.

[inversegalaxy]

I swear I thought this would be an april fools vid where he just intricately describes the changes in microclimate that occur naturally over 6 hours

[fauxstard]

Everyone else: "wow, this is quite interesting."

Me: *Taking notes for my new DnD campaign's map*

[notakiwi]

the effort going into the projection changing landmasses shape on the map and also into detailed and thought-out biomes instead of just "equator hot and wet, everywhere else is dryer and cooler" is actually INSANE and I LOVE IT

[williammagnaye]

I find it crazy that most of the mountain ranges in this rotated Earth bar entry to the polar regions, with the most glaring example being what was once Asia having an impenetrable mountain range separating frozen India from the wider world, or South America having a wall of snowy mountains walling off the Polar Seas. This could work great as an RPG Map, starting at the current tropical UK and exploring outwards from there.

[Igneusflama]

5:40 we ALMOST had a peaceful what-if where no one dies... You just couldn't resist the catastrophe, could you?

[MA-flgt]

I like to imagine that in some alternate timeline or universe, there's an xkcd What If? channel making this exact video—but from their perspective, we’re the alternate reality. lol

[shiro-cst]

1:55 Finally, Greenland is actually green now.

[pwalmsley]

I now want someone to make this a playable map on Civilization.

[AllenGarvin]

A high school teacher told me the horse latitudes were where they had to toss the horses overboard when the winds calmed, and somehow this made the ship lighter and it could sail on. He was a coach, and also told us all men have one less rib than women. .... Yeah, I grew up in the south, why do you ask?

[potatoesandducks]

The first 90% of the video: Wow, finally an xkcd video where everyone doesn't die
xkcd: Now what if we rotated it instantly

[frisianmouve]

5:56 "the Netherlands finally floods". Seems like you underestimate the power of the water-bending tribe

[rstarks]

he didnt mention that with the Caribbean Sea being enclosed and now being subpolar, as well as all of south America still being in the southern hemisphere, oceanic cities of northern south america become super vulnerable to snowfall. botoga and Cartagena rival Japans northern islands and siberia. Quito glaciates for nearly seven months a year, meanwhile cities a bit further (what used to be east) now become cool rain drenched areas that are really similar to British Columbia. this is an amazing video

[euan]

As someone who lives in Malaysia and enjoys autumn and winter whenever I get the chance to go on vacation, this new Earth puts me right in the new northern circle and I now have more cold than I would ever want... and a reminder to be careful what I wish for.

[camerontauxe]

5:31 "the only place on Earth where tigers apologize as they attack you"
Sounds like London has fallen into the Neath

[MiniBeas]

You know what I really love is the fact that when you're trying to draw the globe as a flat map it gets all warped and it's warped in its own beautiful ways just like our own world map gets warped when we try to draw it as a flat map.

[StrimClocks]

As a person who loves world maps and things like that, I love this video. More rotated earth. Absolutely brilliant.

[TheSpearkan]

I remember a worldbuilding project available online called the Planetocopia that did several more of these tilt scenarios with varying effects, they were as follows:

Seapole: What is both poles were in the ocean? (Poles in South atlantic and Central Pacific.). Sea levels much higher, hotter but fewer deserts.

Shiveria: What if both poles were on land (Poles in Southeast Asia and South America): Colder, drier and more deserts. The Mediterranean is also a toxic high pressure zone as receding sea levels partially drain it.

Turnovia: North is south and South is north. While it doesn't sound like much it does flip ocean and air currents that shift where our deserts and rainforests are.

Jaredia: A rather interesting case, a layout that trues to maximise connectivity and interchange between life and civilisations (North Pole in Africa, South in Pacific). The equator is a belt of land that includes Australia, Antarctica and North and South America. This world is described as similar but more connected than ours.

Definitely worth a read in your free time but I would skip the biology sections as the creator is a bit weird about it and goes too hard into "why just sapient humans?"