Robinson projection

The Robinson projection, presented by the American geographer and cartographer Arthur H. Robinson in 1963, is a modified cylindrical projection that is neither conformal nor equal-area. Central meridian and all parallels are straight lines; other meridians are curved. It uses lookup tables rather than analytic expressions to make the world map “look” right [1]. The scale is true along latitudes 38° north and south. The projection was originally developed for use by Rand McNally and is currently used by the National Geographic Society.

n[lon0/]scale or N[lon0/]width

• n or N: Sets the projection type.

• lon0: Sets the central meridian [Optional].

• scale or width: Sets the map size.

Footnotes

[1]

Robinson provided a table of y-coordinates for latitudes every 5°. To project values for intermediate latitudes one must interpolate the table. Different interpolants may result in slightly different maps. GMT uses the interpolant selected by the parameter GMT_INTERPOLANT in the gmt.conf file.

import pygmt
from pygmt.params import Axis

fig = pygmt.Figure()
# Use region "d" to specify global region (-180/180/-90/90)
fig.coast(
    region="d",
    projection="N12c",
    frame=Axis(annot=True, tick=True, grid=True),
    land="ivory",
    water="bisque4",
)
fig.show()