EARTH · LAYER SWIPE
Drag to Compare Two Live Layers
Two live map layers, stacked in one frame, split by a divider you drag with your finger. The flagship comparison holds live infrared clouds from the weather satellites against high-resolution satellite imageryof the ground — so you can wipe the divider across the map and see, right now, exactly what the clouds are hiding. Grab the handle and drag.
How it works
The left layer shows to the left of the handle, the right layer to the right. Drag the handle across to reveal one under the other. Both maps pan and zoom together, so they always line up.
Infrared cloud tops, refreshed hourly. NOAA blends the world’s weather satellites into one seamless infrared picture; cold high cloud tops glow, clear sky reads dark, and it works day and night.
High-resolution imagery of the surface. This is imagery of the surface, not a live feed — so it carries no LIVE tag. It is the same satellite basemap the Atlas uses.
New to swiping two layers, or want the why behind it? A short guide walks through what a swipe comparison is and when it beats laying one layer over another:
See it in context
The same infrared clouds, on their own across the whole globe — the layer the swipe wipes against the ground.
EARTH · WEATHERWeather where you areWhat those clouds mean on the ground — the live forecast for any place, temperature, rain and wind.
ATLAS · COMPARECompare the world by numbers →About this data
The live cloud side is the NOAA/NESDIS Global Mosaic of Geostationary Satellite Imagery (GMGSI) — GOES, Meteosat and Himawari blended into one seamless global infrared picture, refreshed hourly, US public domain and served keyless. The ground side is Esri World Imagery on the free ArcGIS tier — imagery of the surface, not a live feed, so it is shown without a LIVE tag. Every source is named on the map itself; where the imagery key is not configured the map base shows on that side rather than a fabricated layer. Sources: NOAA/NESDIS GMGSI · Esri World Imagery.