I am trying to use the coastline data provided by Natural Earth (in the form of shape files) within basemap. I am getting weird horizontal lines as shown in the figures below. When the plot is centered on 180 degree longitude, the number of such lines increases.
Looking at the location of these lines (which is where continents wrap around), I reckon the source of the problem must be related to how the polygons are defined in the shape file and the wrapping of the polygon around a longitude, but I don't see how I can go about fixing it. I would expect a mapping library like basemap to be able to handle this transparently. Any solution would very be helpful.
I am using the "ne_110m_coastline" data from Natural Earth and I have not modified it in any way. Here's a sample code that replicates the problem:
Map = Basemap(projection='eck4',lon_0=0, resolution='c')
a = Map.readshapefile("ne_110m_coastline", "coast")