The One Minute Geographer: This Fragile Earth (8) What’s Up at the North Pole?

North Polar shipping routes. Map from thearcticinstitute.org

We can learn a lot of interesting things by looking at a polar projection — one that has the North or South Pole at the center of the map. In this type of projection, distortion is least around the Pole and greatest at the outer perimeter — close to the Equator.