30 Days of Maps Day 11 - Arctic

It's already day 11 of the #30DayMapChallenge and today's theme is the Arctic - Map the Arctic. Whether it’s ice coverage, wildlife habitats, or the effects of climate change, this day is all about mapping the cold extremes of the Arctic..

So mapping the Arctic in Icon Map Pro is a challenge as the Mercator projector excludes the Arctic. I've decided to use the Wiechel projection as it's a top down view of the North Pole. There's a lot of distortion as you move further away from the centre, but as we're focussed on the Pole, it works well.

I'm mapping the extent of the Polar Ice Cap using data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. I've included the last 10 years of data showing the extent of the ice in December each year - you can drag the slicer show the different years. In addition I've overlaid the Arctic sea routes from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

To draw the Wiechel projection, I've used the same technique as I did for the US Elections using the Albers USA projection, except this time I discovered the Dirty Reprojectors online app which allows you to upload a GeoJSON file in the WGS84 projection and it maps the coordinates to your selected projection - but using the WGS84 coordinate system. This means that the features appear centered in the middle of the map - not in their correct locations, so you can't use a background map. Instead of the background map, I'm using a geoJSON overlay of the countries - in the Wiechel projection.

If you'd like to see how the report was built, you can download it here.