Meteorologists warn that more rain is expected in the coming days, raising fears of further flooding across the region.
Amid the Boston schools’ drama, one group of researchers decided they’d had enough of Peters and set out to do something.Cartographer Bernard Jenny, who teaches immersive visualisation at Australia’s Monash University, said he was approached by Tom Patterson, a retired cartographer with the UN National Parks, for the task. Together with software engineer Bojan Savric, the team in 2018 created an equal area map they called the “Equal Earth” projection.
That version, which sees Africa expand impressively, is increasingly seen as the closest thing to a perfect area map. It’s the same one Ogundairo’s team is pushing for.“But that’s maybe a slightly pretentious name,” Jenny laughed over a Zoom call, explaining that Equal Earth is still not a perfect representation of the Earth. “We were just tired of the Peters resurgence and wondered why people would go with that when it’s not even the best in terms of anything,” he said.The new projection tries to correct the Robinson projection, created in 1963 by American Arthur H Robinson. Many scientists use Robinson’s map because it is more visually balanced, although it compromises on area, size and scale, and particularly enlarges areas close to the north and south poles.
“We tried to come up with a version of Robinson that does not distort area,” Jenny explained. “So we stretched it in a way such that the different areas are not enlarged or shrunken. So Greenland is 14 times smaller than Africa on the globe, and it’s also 14 times smaller on the Equal Earth map.”Jenny said the team never set out specifically to correct some of the most highlighted errors of the Mercator projection. Subconsciously, though, he said, they knew they wanted their map to better represent historically distorted regions like Africa.
“I would guess any reasonable geographer would support that idea,” the scientist said.
Equal Earth rose in popularity after a NASA scientist saw it online right after it was published, and the organisation immediately switched to it.Voting turnout has been highest in regions of South Korea affiliated with the Democratic Party, while turnout has been lowest in conservative strongholds like Gyeongsang Province, according to David Lee, a Seoul-based journalist.
“The morale at the Democratic Camp is much more energetic, especially after the historic impeachment trial,” he told Al Jazeera. “PPP supporters, on the other hand, are navigating murkier waters.”The vote is expected to bring an end to months of political turmoil in South Korea, where a polarised public has mobilised both for and against the impeached Yoon.
Fraud conspiracy theories have also swept the election period, Lee said, linked in part to provisions for early voting.South Korean police reported an uptick in vandalism of campaign materials and said this week they had apprehended at least 690 people over related incidents, according to Yonhap.