Setting global variables but not getting expected result [duplicate]

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I am having a problem setting some global variables to use outside of the script that I am writing. I believe that I am setting them correctly but they don't seem to be cooperating. My console output is always an empty string, where as they are supposed to be defined inside the primary calling function of the demo web page. All of the other data seems to be working fine, if I print it out without setting it to a variable then it works fine. However I need the variables so that I can call them outside of this script. Any ideas?

var latitude = "", longitude = "";


$(document).ready(function() {
  $.ajax({
        dataType: "json",
        url:"http://api.geonames.org/searchJSON?q=Atlanta&maxRows=10&username=Demo"
}).then(function(data){
        console.log(data);
        latitude = data.geonames[0].lat; <---Variables are supposed to be set here
        longitude = data.geonames[0].lng; <----Variables are supposed to be set here
        $('.map-Latitude').append(data.geonames[0].lat); <----Works well
        $('.map-Longitude').append(data.geonames[0].lng); <----Works Well
    });
});


console.log("Latitude is: " + latitude); <---- prints out an empty string
console.log("Longitude is: " + longitude); <---- prints out an empty string

I cant seem to get this to work, I feel like I am setting the variables properly but they don't seem to be working well. Thanks!