The European Plate Observing System (EPOS) has released a major enhancement to its geoscience data and services platform, introducing a new map projection designed to accurately represent the Arctic region. The update addresses a longstanding technical limitation that affected researchers working with data at the highest northern latitudes.
For years, the EPOS data portal relied on the widely used Web-Mercator projection (EPSG:3857), a standard in many digital mapping platforms. While adequate for mid-latitudes, this projection becomes increasingly distorted near the poles, producing extreme areal exaggeration above roughly 80°N. As a result, some geolocated datasets of interest to the Arctic research community were displayed inaccurately or, in the most northern locations, could not be visualised at all.
To overcome this issue, EPOS has implemented an Arctic Polar Stereographic projection (EPSG:3995), a North Pole–centred view aligned with the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO). The new projection delivers a geometrically accurate representation of the polar region, enabling scientific data to be discovered, displayed and analysed with far greater precision.
“This improvement provides the Arctic Earth sciences community with a much-needed way to work confidently with high-latitude datasets,” EPOS representatives said. “It creates a reliable and FAIR environment for integrating Arctic geospatial information, including data produced through initiatives such as HiAOOS-2.”
With the feature now in production, users can explore Arctic datasets without the visual distortions previously introduced by Web-Mercator. The accurate polar view supports better integration of geological, geophysical, geodetic and environmental observations across the Arctic domain, strengthening EPOS’s mission to provide seamless access to multidisciplinary solid Earth science data.
While the new projection represents a significant step forward, EPOS notes that further work is underway to ensure full compatibility with the diverse data types used across the Arctic Solid Earth sciences community. Collaborations have already begun with partner initiatives to benchmark and refine this capability.
Invitation to Arctic Data Providers
As a distributed, federated Research Infrastructure integrating data from national and international providers to support research on earthquakes, volcanoes, tectonics, geodesy, geomagnetism, satellite observations, geological mapping and more, EPOS is happy to hear from research groups working with Arctic datasets who are interested in:
- Integrating into a pan-European infrastructure that supports FAIR and open science
- Increasing visibility and discoverability of high-latitude datasets
- Accessing shared tools for visualisation, analysis and multidisciplinary data integration
- Participating in a growing community advancing solid Earth science research in the polar regions
We aim to build a more complete picture of Arctic geodynamics and to strengthen collaboration between European and international research communities. Researchers and data providers wishing to collaborate or learn more about integrating Arctic datasets into EPOS are invited to contact us at info@epos-eric.eu
