Interactive projection study
New World Map – Mercator vs Equal Earth
Compare the familiar Mercator world map with the Equal Earth projection and see how map projections change our visual understanding of relative land area.
Why does the new world map look different?
Mercator preserves local angles for navigation, but its scale increases toward the poles. Equal Earth preserves relative area, so countries and continents occupy proportional amounts of space.
The true size of Africa
Africa covers about 30.37 million km², while Greenland covers about 2.17 million km². Africa is therefore approximately fourteen times larger.
Mercator vs Equal Earth
Mercator is useful for navigation and tiled web maps. Equal Earth is better suited to educational, thematic, and general-purpose maps where area comparison matters.
Primary sources and method
Map geometry uses Natural Earth 1:110m boundaries. Projection math uses D3’s spherical implementations. Area values are rounded and may vary slightly with coastline, inland-water, and boundary conventions.
- Natural Earth 1:110m country boundaries
- Equal Earth projection project
- D3 geographic projections
- United Nations Statistics area data
- African Union area reference
Published September 7, 2026 · Last reviewed September 7, 2026