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This layer drapes a live, near-global cloud map over the 3D Earth — the actual cloud cover from meteorological satellites, refreshed every three hours. The composite is built and published openly by Matt Eason (clouds.matteason.co.uk) from EUMETSAT geostationary imagery blended with NASA's Blue Marble base, mirrored at the poles to fill the gaps geostationary satellites cannot see. We composite it straight into the globe's surface shader, so the clouds sit exactly over the right geography and are lit by the live day/night terminator: they glow on the sunlit side and fade to dark across the night side, just like the real planet. It is a raster image overlay rather than clickable points, and it is off by default — toggle "Live clouds" under the Environmental group to switch it on. Because it updates every three hours it shows the broad weather picture — cyclones, fronts, monsoon cloud bands — rather than minute-by-minute motion. It is one of around 33 live layers you can stack on the same interactive Earth.
Data source: Matt Eason · EUMETSAT/NASA
From an open, community-maintained composite by Matt Eason (clouds.matteason.co.uk) built from EUMETSAT geostationary satellite imagery over a NASA Blue Marble base. It refreshes every three hours and is served as a CORS-enabled image we drape onto the globe.
They are composited into the globe's day/night shader, so they are lit by the real-time terminator — bright on the sunlit hemisphere and dark on the night side, matching where it is actually day and night on Earth right now.
The composite is regenerated every three hours (eight times a day), so it captures the large-scale cloud picture — storm systems, fronts and cloud bands — rather than second-by-second motion.
No — clouds are a raster image overlay, not point data, so there is nothing to click. The layer is off by default; toggle "Live clouds" under Environmental to show or hide it.