Winkel Tripel

In 1921, the German mathematician Oswald Winkel a projection that was to strike a compromise between the properties of three elements (area, angle and distance). The German word “tripel” refers to this junction of where each of these elements are least distorted when plotting global maps. The projection was popularized when Bartholomew and Son started to use it in its world-renowned “The Times Atlas of the World” in the mid-20th century. In 1998, the National Geographic Society made the Winkel Tripel as its map projection of choice for global maps.

Naturally, this projection is neither conformal, nor equal-area. Central meridian and equator are straight lines; other parallels and meridians are curved. The projection is obtained by averaging the coordinates of the Equidistant Cylindrical and Aitoff (not Hammer-Aitoff) projections. The poles map into straight lines 0.4 times the length of equator.

R[central meridian]/width: Give the optional central meridian (default is the center of the region) and the map width.

Out:

<IPython.core.display.Image object>

import pygmt

fig = pygmt.Figure()
# Use region "d" to specify global region (-180/180/-90/90)
fig.coast(region="d", projection="R12c", land="burlywood4", water="wheat1", frame="afg")
fig.show()