About The Earth Record
The Earth Record is an independent daily journal of the state of the planet. Each day gets one page: the most notable thing that happened on Earth, a few supporting points, and a panel for each part of the planet we watch. It is written for anyone, not just scientists.
It is run by Andy Wilkinson (Meon Valley Web) in the UK. It is not a warning service. For anything that affects your safety, follow your local warning authority, such as the Met Office and Environment Agency in the UK.
How a day's page is chosen
Every fact that could be news is given a score from 0 to 100. The headline is the highest score, if it reaches 30; otherwise the page says it was a quiet day. Up to four supporting points follow, one per topic. Panels are ordered by the same scores. A few examples of the scale:
- An earthquake of magnitude 7 scores more than a record-warm Pacific; a red-alert cyclone scores more than both.
- A minor (G1) geomagnetic storm is shown in its panel but is never a headline. A strong (G3) storm or worse adds a notice at the top of the page.
- Earthquakes need to be at least magnitude 4.5 to be counted on the daily pages, so counts compare fairly across the decades.
Days run from midnight to midnight UTC. Today's page is rebuilt every 15 minutes. When the day ends it is rebuilt one last time and then never changes, so a day's page is a record of what was known at the time. Later corrections by the agencies are not applied to finished days.
Sources
Everything shown comes from the public data of the agencies below, and each panel names its source. We summarise their data; we do not alter it.
| What | Where from | Credit and terms |
|---|---|---|
| Earthquakes | USGS Earthquake Hazards Program | US government data. Credit USGS. |
| Volcano alert levels (US) | USGS Volcano Hazards Program | US government data. Credit USGS. |
| Volcano and storm tracking | NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET) | NASA data. Credit NASA. |
| Cyclone alert colours | Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), EU and UN | Credit GDACS. Alert colours are indicative. |
| Space weather | NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center | US government data. Credit NOAA SWPC. |
| US weather alerts | US National Weather Service | US government data. Counts only. |
| England flood warnings | Environment Agency | Contains Environment Agency information, Open Government Licence v3.0. |
| Arctic and Antarctic sea ice | NSIDC Sea Ice Index (NOAA at NSIDC) | Credit NSIDC. |
| Pacific temperature and El Niño | NOAA Climate Prediction Center | US government data. Credit NOAA CPC. |
| Global ocean temperature | NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | US government data. Credit NOAA NCEI. |
| Carbon dioxide | NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Mauna Loa | US government data. Credit NOAA GML. |
| Sea level | NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry | US government data. Credit NOAA. |
| Ozone hole | NASA Ozone Watch | NASA data. Credit NASA. |
| Map outlines | Natural Earth | Public domain. |
Limits
- Coverage is partial. Data can be preliminary, revised, delayed or missing, and some feeds update only monthly.
- Alert colours from GDACS and volcano colour codes describe likely impact or aviation risk. They are not forecasts.
- UK weather warnings from the Met Office are not used here. Please use the Met Office directly.
- Our sea level data ends in February 2025. The latest value we hold is shown with its date.
Privacy
This site has no accounts, forms or advertising, and sets no cookies. Pages use no external fonts or images. The one thing loaded from elsewhere is a privacy-friendly page-view counter (Umami), run by Meon Valley Web at stats.meonvalleyweb.com. It records which pages are viewed, with the browser type, screen size and country. It uses no cookies, does not follow you across sites and honours your browser's Do Not Track setting.
Our host, Cloudflare, processes the network requests needed to deliver pages, including your IP address and browser details, and keeps operational and security logs.
Links to scientific agencies open their own sites, whose privacy policies apply. For a privacy question or a correction, contact the operator through Meon Valley Web and include the page address.