As opposed to the northern/southern hemisphere that has:
- a clear reference point (equators)
- traditionally we don’t model a rotation north/south
Western/eastern hemisphere
- doesn’t have a clear reference (Greenwich?)
- traditionally we model rotation on the north/south axis so western/eastern would depend from the time
north/south is just as arbitrary, maybe even more so.
technically the antarctic pole is the North (since the magnetic field lines exit the Earth here) and the arctic pole is technically the South (here the lines enter the Earth).
we decided to name them in reverse because it was simpler to say that “north is where the north part of the magnetic hand is pointing to”.