From planet to landscape.
Drag to orbit, pinch or scroll to zoom, and tilt to see terrain. High-resolution imagery loads progressively in supported browsers.
EESP SCIENCE ATLAS / PLANETARY EXPLORER
Explore Earth, in remarkable detail.
Glide from a view of our planet to mountains, rainforests and deserts. Explore satellite imagery and 3D terrain, then reveal every colour of the climate-cell mosaic.
Know what you're viewing: The detailed Sentinel-2 mosaic represents 2016–17, not current conditions. The colourful climate cells and impact layers are educational approximations, not observed or predicted climate measurements. Methods & credits.
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High-resolution Earth requires a WebGL-capable browser and access to the map library. The original climate globe remains available.
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LIVE INTERACTIVE MAPGlobe view
Imagery: Sentinel-2 cloudless — EOX IT Services GmbH, modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016–17 (CC BY 4.0) · NASA GIBS / Blue Marble · Elevation © Mapterhorn. Sources are historic, not live.
One colourful planet.
Turn on 2° climate cells to compare simplified rainforests, deserts, savannas, boreal regions and ice at a glance.
Clarity about evidence.
Imagery depicts earlier years; coloured cells and impact pathways are teaching approximations until validated scientific datasets are integrated.
Scientific methods, image licences & limitations
Map engine: MapLibre GL JS in Globe projection, with progressive raster imagery and terrain DEM tiles. High-detail imagery: EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 composite, containing modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016–2017, CC BY 4.0, © EOX IT Services GmbH. This is historical reference imagery, not current land conditions. Alternative: NASA GIBS Blue Marble Next Generation, a historical Earth composite, backed by a locally shipped low-resolution reference when external tiles are unavailable. Elevation: Mapterhorn open terrain with underlying sources individually attributed on its website; 3D relief requires working tile access and WebGL. Climate Cell Mosaic: approximately 4,860 2° geographic teaching cells derived from EESP's existing schematic biome reference. These are neither observed Köppen–Geiger classes nor individual climate-model grid cells. Impacts and the time explorer: conceptual, not measured drought, wildfire, deforestation, biodiversity status, coastal flood modelling or formal future projections. Zooming the categorical cells does not make them more scientifically precise.