Cloud Coverage
Overlay real hourly cloud-cover data over an Area of Interest — historical and forecast weather animated with the scenario timeline, plus per-ground-station weather.
A cloud coverage layer renders real atmospheric cloud cover on top of an Area of Interest. Cloud coverages are children of an AOI, just like sensor Coverages: add them from the AOI’s more options menu (...) → Add Cloud Coverage. You can attach multiple cloud layers to the same AOI and show, hide, or delete them individually from the sidebar.
Weather data is provided by Open-Meteo, an open-data weather service — no API key or setup is required.
Data source: forecast vs. historical
Which weather dataset serves your scenario depends on where the scenario window sits relative to today (the real current date, not the scenario’s epoch):
| Simulation time (relative to real today) | Dataset | Globe legend tag |
|---|---|---|
| More than ~2 days in the past | Historical reanalysis (ECMWF IFS / ERA5) | Cloud Cover · Historical |
| Within the last ~2 days, current time (now), and up to +15 days ahead | Forecast | Cloud Cover · Forecast |
| Beyond +15 days in the future | No data — beyond the forecast horizon | Cloud Cover · Not available |
Two limitations follow directly from this:
- The future is capped at 15 days. No real cloud forecast exists beyond that horizon, so SMD shows nothing rather than fabricated weather. For a scenario that starts now and extends past +15 days, clouds animate through the forecast period and then the layer disappears.
- Each layer covers at most 90 days of hourly data, matching the maximum scenario window.
Values are hourly total cloud cover (0–100%) across the AOI. The layer animates with the simulation timeline, transitioning smoothly between hourly values as the clock runs.
Visualization settings
Every cloud coverage layer can be styled independently from its settings modal:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Display name shown as a child row under the AOI |
| Visualization Mode | Cloud Color (Density Alpha) — a single color whose transparency scales with cloud cover — or Heatmap Color Scale |
| Color / Color Scheme | Solid cloud color, or a heatmap gradient: Turbo, Viridis, Plasma, Inferno, Cool–Warm, Red–Yellow–Green, or Custom Colors (independent Low/High pickers) |
| Opacity | Layer transparency (5–100%) |
| Min Cloud Cutoff | Areas below this cloud-cover percentage render fully transparent, so clear skies show the terrain underneath |
| Max Cloud Cutoff | Cloud-cover percentage that maps to the top end of the color scale (or full opacity in single-color mode); values at or above this threshold saturate at the maximum color |
| Interpolation Smoothness | Density of the rendered texture: Coarse (120), Medium (220), Fine (400), Ultra (650), or Extreme (900) cells along the AOI’s longest side. Finer settings look smoother but do not add real spatial detail |
| Show cloud coverage on globe | Toggle the layer without deleting it |
| Show data points | Mark on the globe the locations where real weather data was retrieved — the point count and spacing are shown in the globe legend |
Hovering the layer on the globe shows the cloud-cover percentage at the cursor.
Ground station weather
Cloud cover is also available at individual ground stations. Open a ground station’s more options menu (...) in the sidebar → Weather (Earth stations only) to plot hourly conditions at that location for the scenario window:
- Cloud cover (%) — with average and min/max
- Temperature at 2 m (°C) — with average and min/max
- Precipitation (mm/h) — with total and peak rate
Each series can be toggled on and off in the chart, a badge indicates whether the data comes from the historical archive, the forecast, or both, and the full time series can be exported to CSV.
Requirements and limitations
- Cloud coverage requires an AOI of any region type. Both features are Earth-only.
- No data beyond the +15-day forecast horizon, and a maximum of 90 days of data per layer.
- Cloud-cover values are weather-model data at ~9–25 km resolution — intended for mission-level situational awareness, not fine local nowcasting.
- Loading weather data consumes quota credits according to your plan.
Next steps
- Area of Interest — define the region cloud coverage renders over
- Coverage — sensor swaths and Figure of Merit heatmaps over the same AOIs
- Compose Coverage — fleet-level combined coverage analysis