Live Wind, Ocean Currents and Aurora Map: Living Earth

Living Earth turns the TrueSize map into a live weather and ocean map. Wind and ocean currents flow across the screen as animated streaks, and you can add colored layers for temperature, rain, clouds, waves, sea ice and the aurora. You can also lay recent NASA satellite images over the map and then drag your own countries onto it for scale.

Wind animated over the map with Living Earth.

How to turn on Living Earth

1. Open the Fun tab of the ribbon. Return to Earth first if a planet is shown.
2. Click Living Earth. The Living Earth panel opens.
3. Make sure Enable Living Earth is on.
4. Under Motion, choose Wind, Currents or Waves (or switch motion off).
5. Under Overlay, pick a colored layer from the list. The list is grouped into Atmosphere, Ocean, Space and NASA.

The Living Earth panel: motion, overlay, wind height and satellite imagery.

You can close the panel and keep the layers running. A small legend stays on the map; use its settings button to reopen the panel, or collapse the legend to save space.

What you can show

Group	Layers
Motion	Wind, ocean currents, waves
Atmosphere	Wind at 10 m and at three higher levels, temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, relative humidity, dew point, wet-bulb temperature, CAPE, precipitable water, cloud water, sea-level pressure, misery index, wind power density, snow depth, sea ice
Ocean	Wave height, wave period, wave direction, ocean currents
Space	Aurora
NASA	True-color satellite views and aerosols

Each layer has a short plain-language description in the panel, so you can read what a term like CAPE or dew point means before you use it.

Wind at different heights

When wind is shown, Wind height lets you choose the altitude:

• Near surface · 10 m is the wind you feel on the ground.
• Lower atmosphere · ~1.5 km is the 850 hPa level.
• Middle atmosphere · ~5.5 km is the 500 hPa level.
• Jet stream · ~10.5 km is the 250 hPa level, where the fast high-altitude winds run.

The Wind speed and Current speed legends show what the colors mean, and the Animate checkbox starts or pauses the movement.

Ocean currents and waves

Choose Currents under Motion to see how surface water flows. The streaks make big systems easy to spot, such as the Gulf Stream along the US East Coast. Current data comes from the HYCOM ocean model; wave data comes from the GFS-Wave model.

Waves motion with the Significant Wave Height overlay. The Currents button shows surface ocean currents the same way.

Aurora forecast

In the Space group, the aurora overlay shows where the Northern or Southern Lights are expected to be more active. Seeing them still depends on darkness and clear skies, so combine it with the Cloud cover overlay.

The Aurora Activity overlay over northern Canada.

NASA satellite imagery

Under Satellite imagery you can choose a true-color view from the VIIRS instruments on the NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites, or a MODIS aerosol layer that shows particles in the air. Use Imagery opacity to blend the picture with the map. The panel shows the Image date, and a note explains that this is a daily view, so the exact capture time varies by location.

NASA true-color imagery with adjustable opacity.

Tips

• Open Data details to see the source model, the Data from date and the Source of the active layer. If a layer is older than expected, the panel marks it as Older data.
• Switch to the globe (Style → Globe) to follow weather systems around the curve of the Earth.
• Load a country first and drag it over a storm or a current to see how large the system really is.
• If a layer says This layer is unavailable right now, try another layer or come back later.

Limits

• Living Earth is not available in planet mode, in poster mode or during the games.
• Living Earth settings are not kept in share links.
• Weather data comes from forecast models and satellites. It is useful for exploring, not for safety decisions.

Examples to try

• Turn on Wind, then drag the contiguous 48 US states over the Atlantic to compare their size with a storm system.
• Pick the Currents motion and look at the Gulf Stream beside Europe.
• Open the aurora overlay on the globe and rotate to the pole.
• Compare the size of storms with countries on the Moon and other planets page.

Where it works

Living Earth is available on the web version only. It is not in the mobile app.

Related

• Customize the map appearance
• Map styles and skins
• Compare countries on other planets
• Move and compare regions

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