Question

why are the latitudes negative in the southern hemisphere​

Answer 1

Answer:

"Latitudes have positive and negative values. Northern Hemisphere latitudes are positive, and negative latitudes occur in the Southern Hemisphere. The largest latitude circle (greatest radius and perimeter) occurs at the Equator (0º), the smallest at the Poles"

Answer 2

Answer:

Latitude and Longitude

The use of degrees, minutes, and seconds dates to the Babylonians, whose mathematics relied heavily on both 60 and 12. This influence remains with us today for both time and circles. Most of mathematics prefers radians to degrees, and in fact GIS software, like Excel or Matlab, actually will use radians for angular computations.

There are many conventions for how to record latitude and longitude, and they present challenges for a computer. How to record the minutes and seconds ('/'' or m/s or min/sec), and whether to record in decimal degrees, or decimal minutes, or decimal seconds means that coordinates are often ambiguous, if not to you then for the GIS program. To avoid problems, unless a program explicitly prompts or allows to use use minutes or second, you should always use decimal degrees; it is easy to use a spreadsheet to convert if necessary.

Latitude/longitude