Gravity of Earth Gravity acceleration is a vector quantity. In a spherically symmetric Earth, gravity would point directly towards the sphere's centre. As the Earth is slightly flatter, there are consequently slight deviations in the direction of gravity. Tools exist for calculating the strength of gravity at various cities around the world. The effect of latitude can be clearly seen with gravity in high-latitude cities: Anchorage (9.826 m/s), Helsinki (9.825 m/s), being about 0.5% greater than that in cities near the equator: Kuala Lumpur (9.776 m/s), Manila (9.780 m/s). The effect of altitude can be seen in Mexico City (9.776 m/s; altitude ),
Latitude to radians, the arc distance is about The distance in metres (correct to 0.01 metre) between latitudes formula_7 − 0.5 degrees and formula_7 + 0.5 degrees on the WGS84 spheroid is The variation of this distance with latitude (on WGS84) is shown in the table along with the length of a degree of longitude (east-west distance): A calculator for any latitude is provided by the U.S. Government's National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The following graph illustrates the variation of both a degree of latitude and a degree of longitude with latitude. Historically a nautical mile was defined as the length of