If the Web Mercator projection distorts the relative sizes of countries so dramatically, you know that it must also be distorting your analysis results. The Mollweide projection distorts the size of the polar regions much less. In fact, Greenland is slightly smaller than India. And Greenland also looks of comparable size. The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. The map also suggests that Scandinavian countries are larger than India, whereas, India is actually three times the size. This is called the Mercator projection. To see the actual size of Greenland, look at a globe. A Mercator projection is a mathematical method of showing a map of the globe on a flat surface. Looking at this map, you may think that Greenland is many times larger than India. Gerardus Mercator invented his famous projection in 1569 as an aid to navigators. Greenland does not change size! Greenland is a critical part of the world, which is regularly covered on this blog, because it hosts the second largest ice body on Earth – the Greenland … In 1569, Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594) (Figure below) figured out a way to make a flat map of our round world. Yes, the famous world map we used to study from is flawed. Most people are accustomed to using Mercator projection maps. Africa and Greenland are not the same size. Greenland isn’t actually bigger than Africa. The Mercator projection makes everything that is near the polar areas appear too large. In 1973, Arno Peters introduced the Gall–Peters projection (first appeared in 1855) and promoted it as much more realistic perception of the world than the Mercator projection. Now comes the “truth”: Mercator … With this coordinate system, the geodetic coordinates defined on the WGS 84 datum are projected as if they were defined on a sphere, using a sphere-based version of the Mercator projection. Greenland is situated almost entirely in the North Pole which makes it heavily stretched out in the maps, making it look bigger and wider. Mercator and Gall-Peters are two of the most well-known map projections, but there are thousands of others, each with its own strengths and weaknesses according to the … There are hundreds of different map projections. Mercator projection: The maps we see and use in schools are based on Mercator projection. It depends which projection you use. It seems that writing about map projections is a little bit like waiting for one of London’s iconic red buses; you write one and immediately another one comes along. Mercator. The Mercator Projection ... appearing smaller than high-latitude Greenland when it is in fact 14 times larger. Mercator Projection. As I mentioned in my last post, rightly or wrongly, the most commonly used map projection is the Mercator projection.It’s not without it’s problems or detractors. It is the de facto standard for web maps and online services. On the Mercator map projection Northern latitudes that do include Greenland are greatly exaggerated to look much bigger than they actually are. In fact, the Mercator projection was the first projection regularly identified in atlases. It is impossible to project a (roughly) spherical earth onto a flat map without significant distortion. Compare the map projections Mercator and Mollweide. The cylinder touches Earth at the Equator. In reality, Africa is almost 14 times larger, and Greenland can fit inside China no less than four times. The most popular version is the Mercator projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in … Map Projections Imagine wrapping the round, ball-shaped Earth with a big, flat piece of paper. The Web Mercator coordinate system is also known as Google Web Mercator, Spherical Mercator, WGS 84 Web Mercator, and Pseudo-Mercator. A good discussion of this can be found at the Diversophy site, … Different map projections make Greenland appear to be a different size. In fact, Africa is almost 14 times larger than Greenland as it is only 2.16 million square kilometers in size. On a Mercator projection, Greenland is roughly the same size as Africa. That being said, the Mercator projection is still probably not the best choice for a standard world map. Or more specifically, they're almost all just as bad as each other. The Mercator Projection is still used heavily today. In fact, Greenland is the size of Mexico, the territory of Alaska is 1/5 that of Brazil and Antarctica is a little larger than Canada. This too is an optical illusion created by the Mercator projection. This map projection is practical for nautical applications due to its ability to represent lines of constant course, known as rhumb lines, as straight segments that conserve the angles with … ... On Mercator's map, Antarctica appears to be a huge continent that wraps around the earth and Greenland appears to be just as large as South America although Greenland is merely one-eighth the size of South America. Greenland looks almost the same size as Africa in Mercator projection, but in reality, he is smaller than USAball. This projection was developed in 1568 by Gerhardus Mercator a Flemish geographer, mathematician, and cartographer. The popularity of the 500-year-old Mercator projection of the globe perpetuates a distorted view of the world. A projeção de Mercator é um tipo de projeção cilíndrica do globo terrestre.Nessa projeção, os meridianos são planificados na forma de linhas retas paralelas verticais que são horizontalmente equidistantes, ao passo que os paralelos são planificados na forma de linhas retas paralelas horizontais, de modo que a distância vertical entre … Greenland is more "Inuit and Nordic" than only Nordic and wants to into independence, but his master Denmark will not go beyond letting Greenland exit the EUball, which it did in 1985. Without a doubt, the most famous map projection is the Mercator projection. Google, Apple, Yahoo, Mapquest, and pretty much everything else uses what’s called the Web Mercator projection, which for all practical purposes is pretty much the same. The process of transferring information from the Earth to a map causes every projection to distort at least one aspect of … In reality, South America is eight times larger than Greenland. On the other hand, one kind of projection that doesn’t distort area is the … For example, southern Greenland (near the north pole) is actually smaller than the Arabian peninsula (near the equator). It is a cylindrical map projection that is a product of its time. It's a equal-area cylindric projection and "all areas, both land and water, are of relatively proportional size: one square inch anywhere on the map … In addition, although the USA looks much bigger in the Mercator projection, the true size of Africa compared to the USA is nearly 3 times bigger than the USA. Comparing these and other map projections. It's mathematically impossible to show a spherical globe accurately on a flat map - it just doesn't work. During the sixteenth century, new geographic information was pouring in from … To understand where this mix up originates we need to discuss a mapping system called the Mercator projection. In the Mercator projection (c. 1569), Greenland, which has 0.8 million square miles, is shown as being equal to Africa, which has 11.6 million square miles. Mercator's projection shows that Greenland is the size of Africa, that Alaska is larger than Brazil and that Antarctica is an infinite expanse of ice. A Mercator … The transverse Mercator map projection is an adaptation of the standard Mercator projection.The transverse version is widely used in national and international mapping systems around the world, including the Universal Transverse Mercator.When paired with a suitable geodetic datum, the transverse Mercator … How the Mercator projection distorts the relative size of Greenland and Africa’s mainland. Also, another striking thing you would see in the standard world map is that the island of Greenland, a gigantic landmass that is much bigger than Africa, the Americas, … The thing is, cartographers agreed that the Mercator map was outdated, inaccurate, and wasn't the best way to represent the world's landmasses. Google introduced a new update to Google Maps: when you zoom all the way out, the Earth will no longer be displayed as a flat surface, but as a globe. This is why Greenland, Russia and Canada shrink so much in height and width in the animation, they are fairly high in latitude in the Northern Hemisphere. 1: Greenland is slightly bigger than Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom together [Credit: The True Size]. Although this projection is fine for many purposes, it's not the best way to represent an area that covers many degrees of latitude. Every major online map basically uses the Mercator Projection. The Mercator projection doesn’t preserve area correctly, especially as you get closer to the poles. Notice how Greenland is about as big as South America on a Mercator projection. The misguided notion purports that Greenland is larger than Africa when in actual sense Africa’s land mass is 14 times that of Greenland. Unpopular nerdy map opinion: the Mercator Projection (the one with huge Greenland and tiny Africa) is no worse than most maps out there. The top map shows only half the world, so can avoid lots of distortion. Greenland is not larger than Africa as depicted by some maps. But what if I told you that Mexico is more or less the size of Greenland and Alaska is about one fifth the size of Brazil? Also important is that the closer you are to the poles, the more the distortion when a country is shown on the Mercator projection. 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