About LiveEarthViewer

What this is

Most live maps do one thing. Weather sites show you rain and clouds. Tracking sites show you flights or ships. LiveEarthViewer puts them on the same map, so you can see not just a storm, but the flights diverting around it and the ports in its path. The guides and trackers in this section exist to help you read that map with confidence.

Where the data comes from

Everything here is built on free, open, public data from official agencies. We do not generate our own forecasts or measurements — we present the agencies' data and explain it. Primary sources include:

• NOAA National Hurricane Center — active tropical cyclone positions, intensity, advisories, and the forecast cone, track & points overlay
• NOAA / National Weather Service — official US severe-weather warning polygons (tornado, severe thunderstorm, flash flood and similar)
• NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center — the aurora oval forecast (OVATION model) and space-weather indices
• GDACS — global multi-hazard disaster alerts (earthquakes, cyclones, floods, volcanoes, droughts) — a UN / European Commission cooperation
• ReliefWeb (UN OCHA) — active disease-outbreak records (country-level), each linking to the official WHO / CDC situation report
• USGS Volcano Hazards Program — US volcano alert levels and aviation colour codes
• NASA EONET & FIRMS — wildfire events and satellite heat detections
• NOAA nowCOAST (Ocean Prediction Center) — 15-minute lightning strike density heatmap derived from the Vaisala GLD360 detection network
• NASA GIBS — satellite cloud imagery (GeoColor and True Color), sea-surface temperature, sea-ice concentration, snow cover, the Black Marble city-lights basemap, plus volcanic SO₂ (OMPS) and surface soil moisture (AMSR2)
• GHRSST / NASA JPL PO.DAAC — MUR L4 global sea-surface temperature analysis and MUR25 daily sea-ice concentration
• Open-Meteo / Copernicus CAMS — air-quality index (US AQI) and pollutant data for major cities
• Open-Meteo Marine (NOAA GFS Wave · DWD ICON · ECMWF WAM) — significant wave height, period, direction and swell for the Sea State overlay
• USGS — real-time earthquake feeds
• RainViewer — precipitation radar imagery
• adsb.lol — live aircraft positions (community ADS-B network)
• SondeHub — live weather-balloon (radiosonde) telemetry

One transparent exception: the vessels shown on the Maritime layer areillustrative shipping-lane traffic, not live AIS. Real-time global ship positions are not freely and openly available the way aircraft positions are, so these vessels are simulated moving along the world's real major shipping routes to convey where traffic concentrates. They are clearly labelled as illustrative wherever they appear. Ports and chokepoints on that same layer are real, fixed locations.

Editorial standards

Our standards for the written guides and trackers are simple and strict:

• Accuracy first. Explanations are checked against the science and the source agencies' own documentation. Where the data has limits, we say so plainly.
• Plain language. No jargon for its own sake. If a term matters, we define it.
• Honest live data. Trackers show real current data when events are active, and clearly say so when nothing is happening — an off-season hurricane tracker should look calm, not broken.
• Defer to officials. We are an information and visualisation tool, never a substitute for your national weather service. Every guide says this, because it is true.
• Corrections. Found something wrong? We want to fix it — reach us at the contact below.

Independence

LiveEarthViewer is independent and reader-focused. It runs on open data and is not affiliated with NOAA, NASA, the USGS or any government agency; their names appear only to credit the data sources we rely on.

Contact

Questions, corrections or data-source suggestions are welcome via @simplifaisoul.

Use it on your own site

The live map is free to embed on your own website — pick the layers you want, choose a size, and paste a single line of code. It stays live on its own, with a small badge linking visitors back to the full interactive map.