Inspired by @pnorman’s animation, here’s a year of daily OpenStreetMap tile traffic. One frame per UTC day, from the start of September 2022 through end of August 2023. It’s from the public log aggregates, so some low-traffic tiles are left out for (I assume) efficiency and privacy.
The answers to your questions are:
1. Yacht and rally car races.
2. Yes, well noticed! We call it “Null Island”.
3. No, but it would be nice if it were practical.
4. People scraping tiles.
5. Yes, because the distribution of traffic follows Zipf’s law.
6. If I have time.
@vruba Any idea what those hotspots in the far southern Indian Ocean are? Subantarctic islands?
@kb As I look more closely now, I think you can distinctly see McMurdo due south of NZ.
@vruba Ah, that would make sense, if that's the edge of Antarctica. I was having trouble filling it in mentally.